inside the wonderful world of vee

i’m listening to… brandtson, “celebrity fit club” on vh1.

3:13 am - a couple days ago me, lenny, and liz hit the streets of downtown seattle with a sign saying, “TALK TO US about anything and everything. we’re here to listen.”

it was fun times. it’s always fun times. i didn’t take a racial tally this time around because people were much more engaged than they were in san francisco… but i will give an idea about what kind of thing went on… as best i can remember, anyways.

we started off on the pier downtown waterfront area but couldn’t really find anyone interesting to talk to, and blahblahblehbleh. so we moved, and walked up to pike place. up lots of stairs. :X

as soon as we were setting up on some streetcorner, some guy came to talk to us right away. his name was randall w. stack. he showed me his veteran’s card. he was a veteran from the vietnam war. looked homeless, but was loaded. told lenny to buy him a beer, and then told him to buy us drinks also. we said we didn’t want any, and he said, “you know women. they always say no when they mean yes.” how true! just kidding. anyway, he kept telling me to take notes, even though he could barely finish a sentence, lmao. anyway, right before he told lenny to go buy drinks, he was telling us that he wanted to tell us a story. but right when lenny left, some ther guy name timothy showed up. he kind of looked like indian, with really long curlyish black hair and just normal clothes. he was from the UK, on his way to dinner. when he heard that randall was going to tell a story about the vietnam war, he stuck around, because he grew up in a military family and his dad died in that war, but they never really got the chance to talk about it, so basically, he was pretty repressed his whole life… when timothy first came, we started asking him questions, and randall was just like all freaking out, saying, “oh, you ask him questions but you didn’t ask me any!” like he was jealous that he wasn’t the center of attention anymore, lol.

but lenny took too long to come back with the beer, and randall wouldn’t start telling the story without him there. another guy showed up. his name was shawn. white dude with headphones, just a regular shirt… just a typical working guy. he was working at a law firm, and he didn’t really want to do that for a living, but it was just a job. he had just read a thing on MPR??? about a lady in france who sat in a park with a sign saying “talk to me” in french and english, and she just talked to people. her point was that it’d be hard for young ladies to do the same thing, because people wouldn’t be comfortable talking to young ladies. he found it interesting that this didn’t seem to be true. meanwhile, timothy from the UK had to leave because he had to go to dinner and didn’t have time to hear the story.

fast-forward. shawn left also. lenny came back without a beer, and so randall left to go buy one on his own. he really needed that beer! a guy named rod, a clean-cut african-american dude stopped by. he had a bunch of bags of stuff from pottery barn and some winnie the pooh towels and kid stuff… he was from bellevue. he was like, “i’m bored, so i came down here to buy some stuff.” he had a son that was 12, born in canada. dropped out of tech school that his parents were paying for to join the navy, and they were quite pissed. his son had dual citizenship, and i asked if he got free health care, and he’s like, “hell yeah, that’s part of the reason for having him be born in canada.” ruckyyyy. he was a cool guy. enjoyed his laugh. he’d been in jail for marijuana posession. lame.

randall came back halfway through and gave rod some weird-ass looks. rod left, and randall was about to tell us the story when a security guard lady came and said we couldn’t be in pike’s place market because all the stores were closed. we were going to walk to westlake, but randall told us to go to the park with him. he told us there would be people we could talk to there. didn’t know there was a park in pike’s place for one, but we got there and no one talked to us. he did try to tell us a story, though. haha TRY.

he told us about how when he was young, he was greedy and self-serving, and didn’t believe in religions. he had an apartment on the beach, sold drugs, and knew a lot of girls. he was listening to a ted nugent song which said, “i got news - you never got to go,” and when he was listening, a voice said in his head, “i am the alpha, and i am the omega,” and he thought it was god… uhh so i asked him, “are you christian now?” and he just gave up telling the story altogether, and was just like, “you’re way ahead of me,” but never finished anything. you have to realize that this guy had the absolutely most fascinating teeth. he was missing most of his front teeth except for two on the right side of his mouth, and they were like, yellowed and double the length of my teeth. it was… fascinating. he was like the dirty mad hatter or something.

anyway, we decided to leave because he wasn’t entertaining us, and decided to walk to westlake. the whole way, we held the sign up, and it was probably like a three-block walk. on the way there, this lady was like, “talk to us about anything and everything? get those crackheads off our streets! you see that street right there? a famous musician died there because of crack! get the crackheads off our streets before your kids have to deal with it!” and that was all.

another lady just saw the sign and asked what it was for. she said, “our social experiment is going out ith a group of ladies for this lady’s 39th birthday. just to celebrate that we’re still alive.” lol., like 39 is that old WTF.

then we sat down on these stairs outside of westlake center… and we couldn’t find a place that was that great, but one dude stopped by to talk, and another guy was like, “hey, talk to me,” and we were like, “come over here,” but he said, “i only talk to people here,” so we went to sit by him. his name was savalas. it is greek for “leader of leaders.” smart dude man. but… he sits there everyday talking to people. he told us how he knows everyone and talks to all sorts of people, and people come talk to him… and he told us all about the different kinds of solicitors in the area… people for women’s rights, money for africa, etc. he was a theology major. he really thought the name of my magazine, redefine, was sooo awesome because it is challenging pre-made definitions that were put in place by people of power, etc. etc. blahblahblah. he asked us a lot about what we were studying. i asked him what he was doing with his life, what his dreams and aspirations were. know his responses? he says, “that’s a very personal thing. do you have kids? do you have sex?” and i was answered those questions, but he was like, “see? it’s very personal.” i don’t really think that dreams and aspirations are nearly as personal, but to each his own, i guess.

a large black lady passed by and was like, “i’m so glad you’re talking to them,” to savalas.

a couple more people i don’t remember. this one guy stopped by and he kind of looked crazy to begin with. we asked him where he was going, and he said, “i’m going to canada. i’m from los angeles.” wtf? he said it took him 28 hours to get from seattle to the canadian border, and when he got there, they wouldn’t let him in because he didn’t know where he was going. he said that he needed to get there before his girlfriend stopped being his girlfriend. LMAO. wtf? he’s crazy.

another guy was a musician named nick. he had a guitar and was on his way to a coffee shop. he was from the bay area, as were many people… like rod, and some other people. yeah, i didn’t really talk to him because at the time i was talking to savalas about redefine.

at some point a group of skaters walked by, and savalas told them to talk to us. savalas asked one of them if he could do tricks, and he’s like, “of course. i’m a professional.” savalas was like, “bullshit.” and the guy was like, “yeah okay, i can’t do anything. professional people would probably say, ‘i’m alright.’” and i was like, “dude, you’re wearing sandals,” and another guy who was with him was like, “yeah, that totally gives it away.”

savalas left us with a couple of quotes:
“i freed a thousand slaves. i could have freed a thousand more, if only they knew they were slaves.” - harriet tubman.
&
“we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - albert einstein.

werd.

i’m listening to… fear factor on tv.

3:30 am - you know, i really really hate liking people. i hate it. i feel so weak and pathetic. jeanette mentioned something like that before, and i really have to concur. i hate missing people. i hate not knowing shit. i hate this fucking shit. i have absolutely no courage or faith at all. i’ve never been so paranoid about anything. i don’t feel like lenny likes me beyond the concept of me, or that he’s even with me for any particular worthwhile reason, or that he’s even going to stay with me and not make out with cynthia or something. seriously, it’s like he spends time with me and shit, but i don’t feel like there’s any substance. i don’t think it’s going anywhere. i just feel needy but only half worthwhile. i feel like a giant waste of time - the giant waste of time that i squander away daily. he only listens to like half of what i have to say, and the other bullshit is just… bullshit. god, i hate myself so much. fuck sex. why the fuck did i get myself into that boat? GOD. i can’t stand this fucking shit. i can’t. fuck this shit. fuck.

i’m listening to… eminem, nonpoint.

1:19 am - for those who don’t know, eminem is done. he’s over with. he’s done.

anyway. went to the hellogoodbye show yesterday with cynthia and lenny, but lenny was a boob and left early. the show was freakin awesome.

the opening bands were houston calls and jamisonparker. houston calls is whatever. mediocre. jamisonparker is better but still mediocre. but the two guys who are actually in the band (they tour with two additional ones) are freakin hot, so they got all sortsa girls goin nuts for them. the rocket summer was next… they’re co-headliners with hellogoodbye, but yeah. bryce is nuts. super happy. so happy. it’s almost freakish.

hellogoodbye is my god. to copy and paste from xanga:

“i like down-to-earth celebrities. i hate the ones that are jackasses. if a musician is a jackass or boring (ie: hot hot heat), there is much respect lost. OH YEAH.

i’m watching “surreal life” right now. carey hart ROCKS. he’s hot, and he’s just a nice dude. jose conseco is in the house and everyone is freaking out cause he went to jail and used steroids… whatever. and carey hart’s just like, “i don’t care what they’re saying because i’m assuming he’s past all that, and i just want to make an opinion for myself.” it’s good. and while everyone else is being dramatical, he’s just like… washing dishes. lol. i really… really like people who just don’t give a fuck. it’s so zen omg!

most of the time, you can tell within the first few minutes if a person is going to be a jackass.

a couple of other people… like this one girl janice… supposedly the first supermodel ever… she’s like, “WE STILL WANNA KNOW HOW YOU GOT DISCOVERED PEPA (salt n’ pepa’s pepa),” and then she just ignores her and starts checking out jose conseco’s arms and shit… and saying, “who wants to do it in the phone booth first?” wow what a bitch. I HATE BITCHES.

yesterday was the hellogoodbye show. they’re cool cause they’re goofy, but on top of that, they set up their own equipment. i hate when bands have people do their sound check for them. do you REALLY need people to do that!! it’s so stupid. how how and mighty are you? but it’s so rare to find a band that actually does that themselves… so hellogoodbye… so much respect. so much! especially since they’re like big enough to have their own headlining tour and stuff, and they still do it all themselves.”

yeah. they’re awesome. the last some was “touchdown turnaround” (not including encore) and they bust out water guns and inflatable blow-up props and stuff and diving into the crowd. it rocked. forrest is cute. not physically. just mannerismly. rawr.

after the show i stopped by to talk to bryce of trs real quick… and it was awkward. basically it was like this:
v - hi bryce, i just wanted to say hi to you since i interviewed you a few months ago (i left some copies @ the table prior to the show).
b - was it this?
v - yeah.
b - i remember that.
v - cool.
(silence)
v - good show.
b - what?
v - nice show.
b - thanks.
v - you’re so happy!
b - *shrug…

and that was that. i guess you don’t really have anything to say to “you’re so happy!” but usually they say SOMETHING else. yeah. so i just left real quick cause he wasn’t making me happy

today was a day of basically nothing except for dropping off mags / putting resumes and press kits together. boring.

4:12 am

i see it around me;
i see it in everything.
i could be so much more than this.

i said my goodbyes;
this is my sundown.
i’m gonna be so much more than this.

i need you to show me
the way from crazy.
i wanna be so much more than this.

with one hand high,
you’ll show them your progress.
you’ll take your time…
but no one cares.
no one cares.

* JIMMY EAT WORLD - MY SUNDOWN. *

i’m listening to… jimmy eat world.

5:00 am - not the most ideal time to write in here for numerous reasons (one of which is because it is 5am), but i’m going to anyway, just because i’m going to forget it later.

went questing today with lenny, alex, cynthia, and jennie. hahaha what’s funny is cynthia moved out of her old place but i guess alex and i both forgot, and i drove there and we walked upstairs and stuff (didn’t call, which is good… good job subconscious), and then looked inside and saw HEY THERE’S NO ONE LIVING HERE AT ALL. then we remembered that she moved over in with jennie. oops. it’s only been like uhhhh A MONTH. idiots.

cyn and lenny were having a water balloon fight @ their place beforehand. it was umm yeah fine. then we went to 7/11 to get drinks or whatever and then to magnusson park in sandpoint. it’s right by radford court. big park. don’t know why we’ve never been there before.

first got there and they had some quote unquote art installations (ha typed out), which were like giant pieces from old nuclear subs that were scattered around a lawn and painted black. was going to climb, but it was really hot. then we just continued to walk around. alex climbed a tree quite nicely and got bit by ants or something. jennie found some pink ribbon tied to some stake in the ground that was probably slightly important as it had a #6 written on it, but whatever. tied the ribbon in her hair. found the beach. cyn, alex, and jennie jumped into the nasty ass nuclear waste water. there were the weirdest rocks there. some weird orange clayish rock that writes like chalk. some igneous rock that was weird-as-hell looking. some weird “black diamond” thing… not quite rocks. don’t know what it was. tried to do research right now but i can’t find anything about it. apparently a black diamond is something in between graphite and a diamond. although that scale is huge, i’m sure.

lit a fire on the side of the ocean. found good grass starter. was going to collect some for our bonfire on friday. and i did. but lost my bundle. and then collected another. and then lost another. and then yeah. i finally brought some home, but it’s a small pile, and it’s the third.

anyway, continued onwards. journeyed through bushes. found this random open dirt clearing in the midst of all this trampled grass and trees. there was a ring of trees around the open dirt clearing, which would have been perfect for a satanic ritual or something, omg! and i was trying to build a canopy. cynthia built a fire pit with rocks, and lit some stuff on fire, and then we decided ot put it out… just in case. lighting fires in a forest probably isn’t too great of an idea. just a thought.

took some random spiny ass path out. lots of cool little plants, as usual. saw this wooden plank in the middle of nowhere and thought that maybe there were stairs leading down to a dead body or something under it. instead, there were a lot of snakes. and one pissed or whatever on alex’s hand. and it smelled funny, allegedly.

and then we moved on and found a hole in some fence and found some abandoned part of the park with a bathroom that was all locked up and a soccer goal that was just demolished. and we climbed on some stuff, and then found the bottom of the poles that signs are on. so just the poles really. so we started playing javelin and throwing around these metal poles… and it was probably not very safe, and probably not a good idea, but it was fun, even though they are heavy as hell.

and then we saw this other fence, and we preceeded to hop through that one too. that one just had piles and piles of gravel and stuff. it wasn’t as exciting of a trespassing as one would have hoped, but we did manage to climb up the gravel hill and find this nice indented place between the piles where we all could sit around and stuff. it was neat. and cynthia cut her leg on the fence on the way in (we were stepping on it), and made a maxi pad tourniquet.

upon leaving the gated area, we found some random metal bars and stuff, and lenny and alex held them up and i attempted to climb up and do the around-the-worlds like we used to do in like 5th grade, except it was impossible to climb up it, and i had to swing out to try and get up it, so it was really hard for them to hold it. it was shaped like an upside-down U sorta. yeah and i ended up getting up by climbing alex’s leg / arm. lol.

then we left the area. found some red plastic cups and kicked them around. found a piece of wood that was like a cane.

then went to another beach. the real beach, instead of the random little section that touched water that we had previously found. a lot cleaner. didn’t go in, though.

then we left and found some kids picking at apple trees and alex boosted lenny and got a bunch of good ones. and the kids were just sitting around collecting them. this one girl had so many and other kids wanted to eat from the giant pile, and she was like, “no. you can’t eat from the pile.” jeezus, so bossy! there was this one little hispanic kid that was so freaking fat and so FUCKING CUTE. fuck, i wanted to kidnap him. he tried doing a cartwheel at some point HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA and ended up just crashing into the ground like the little short ball of cuteness he is. AAAHHHH HE WAS SO CUTE. serious. ate an apple. they were fucking yummy. a little bit bitter / sour, but in a good way. it was… probably the best apple i’ve ever had, and the lack of pesticides (i assume) made my mouth NOT itch. and that’s good.

anyway. left. harassed some more plants on the way back to the car, and then went back to the car. wewt.

afterwards. dropped off jennie and cyn and i guess some guy had a dog there that ran in front of a biker on the trail behind their apartments, and they crashed… one girl couldn’t move her neck and stuff or something. sucks. they had to call 911. then lenny, alex, and i went back to nordheim to shower, and went downtown briefly so i could give jake [gravbrot] the new redefine magazines that i got today. that was short-lived, cause then we went to jennie and chol’s apartment and had a mini-bbq. made way too many potatoes, but yeah. watched a lot of vh1. and it was all good. and concluded that if you smell people while breathing in, it tastes totally different, OMG.

i’m listening to… “the circus that has brought us” by the fall of troy, “no cigar” by millencolin.

4:25 am — HAHAHA.

a few days ago me and lenny decided to go eat @ old country buffet. THE PLACE IS FUCKING SICK. but at least they had a poster saying, “RIBS WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN NAPKINS” - A TESTAMENT TO THE NASTINESS.

okay. first off. yesterday i woke up, ran some errands, and then went to watch “charlie and the chocolate factory” with lenny. the new one, with johnny depp. it was FANFUCKINGTASTIC. the beginning was better than the end, but it was visually amazing. the set of the inside was actually made using real taffy, which is just nuts. visually just awesome. and that is enough for me. because that’s the only reason i like movies anyway! partly kidding.

afterwards we did blahblahblah stuff. and then at night we went with cynthia to the aquabats, epoxies, and phenomenauts show. wow. what a show. the phenomenauts were okay, because we couldn’t really see them. i couldn’t see the epoxies either cause i’m short… somehow i managed to get lenny and cyn both in because i was supposed to be on the list +1 but i wasn’t, so i called the tour manager and he let us in and gave me +2. so that was rad. the show did really well and sold really well… packed house. never seen el corazon so packed, that’s for sure.

for the aquabats, we moved off to the side front and i managed to see a little better. damn, what a show. it was great. definitely one of the best i’ve seen, although a little too long. it was like… an hour and fifteen minutes long. but so good because it was so unconventional. the aquabats’ music, for one, is weird as hell. they sing about mechanical apes and fashion zombies. they also wear spandex superhero suits and these facemasks and helmets. the crowd was nuts too. considering they haven’t put out a cd in like five years, i dunno where the hell these fans came from, but they were all decked out in aquabats gear, doing hand symbols, singing along, jumping up and down. but unlike shows like metal and hardcore shows, it was happy jumping. happy moshing. very happy. very.

they also had these between song skits where they beat up monsters, and commercials for “pudding belt dispensers” and weird crap like that. it was definitely, definitely a rock show in the best sense of the term.

after that we came back and despite being pooped, attempted to watch the “spongebob squarepants” movie… although i could not stay awake for most of it so i’ll need to watch it again. :/ after that we just hung around and watched tv while liz and cyn and alex drank. and it’s all good.

damnit i just typed up journal and accidentally deleted it. fuck!

anyway, today at night at like 6:30 i went to andy [chen]’s place, and there was some bbq with enchi ahyee and emily [chen] and some of their friends. not the best meal i have ever eaten. today is a poor day for food - a poor day indeed. it was slabs of meat, cherries, potato chips, kimchi, and potato salad. now… i’m really easy to please foodwise. but this was just the weirdest and most uncomplimenting combination of things… slabs of meat is just plain gross. cherries make my mouth and ear canals itch. potato chips were good - they were BY tgi fridays and tasted like potato skins, but you can only eat so many potato skins for dinner. kimchi is gross by itself (i was forced to eat it with potato salad because there was nothing else to eat it with). potato salad was good at first but since that was the only really edible thing i ended up eating so much of it, and it was made from scratch with tons of miracle whip, and it is really just gross both in thought and in edibility. *gag. also just ate a piece of pizza @ jake [reeves] and brian [nelson]’s, and it was really freaking gross. it took like 2 and a half hours to get there. as always when they order pizza where they live in swear. WTF.

anyways, after the bbq i went to meet up with jake [gravbrot] @ b&o in capitol hill. like i wrote on my xanga: “this guy cuts hair for bands. sounds like a weird job, but he’s so passionate about cutting hair that it’s awesome. you know, as i’m losing faith in doing a magazine and shit, it’s nice… fantastic, really… when i meet people like this who are so willing to help out (even though it is because he gets something out of it… but in the end, i’m pretty sure he’ll be of more help to me than i of him) and seem so into what they are doing. granted, it’s not a normal profession or anything, but from doing this magazine, if there’s anything i’ve gotten out of it, it’s meeting people who are definitely passionate, whether it’s music (a lot of it is music), art, or cutting hair. i’m so privileged to meet people who know what they’re doing and what they want to do… and aren’t living for money or fame or whatever, but rather the pursuit of achieving their goals. it’s definitely a rarity, and it makes me happy to know that people like this do exist within my immediate realm.”

moving onwards… then i came back and hung out in the living room with liz for a bit and arlen and farm came over and we all played a bit of puzzlefighter. then alex and i went over to fremont to the triangle lounge because it was roldan’s birthday. hung around for a while. this one guy who i guess slangs kept busting out all of his bills. he wanted to get some drinks and it was like closing time, so the bartenders kept saying, “we’re not going to serve you, man,” and he kept pulling out wads of bills and just could not understand that they wouldn’t serve him because he had all this money. and later he was complaining about all the money he spent even though he kept taking it out the whole night. and none of it was even in order or anything, it was just each singly-stacked piece of shit notes. so easy to lose. he dropped like twenties a bunch of times. stupid. so stupid. people like that are just asking to be caught.

also at this bar this lady was standing outside when we first got there and she started telling me she was wasted and she was standing outside because there was no room to stand inside. then someone said something about how i just came back, and she asked me where i just came back from, and i said russia. and jake was like, “she wants to see the sights. where should i take her?” and the lady went off from pike’s place market to the waterfront, to the trolley, to the monorail, to downtown, to the space needle…” and the whole time jake kept saying stuff like, “NO WAY… the monorail… does that go to westlake center? i’ve heard a lot about that place.” in the end she decided jake was an ass. she was like, “are you fucking with me?” and he’s like, “no! i’m from minnesota!” and then she resumed going through the whole sights schpeil, saying how she grew up in seattle. and he was still asking these stupid questions, so finally she concluded he was lying and he was an ass, but was still like, “she’s a nice girl. make sure you take her to see all of the sights while she’s here.” lmao.

a couple of people called me adria too, cause i guess that’s another asian girl. wtf.

anyway. later we went back to jake’s. some girl really wanted to have a threesome with jake and his brother alec. i don’t think she was kidding. X: that’d be weird - having a threesome with your brother. weird.

sigh.

so some guy (the drug dealer boy) passed out on jake’s bed and alec took off his pants i guess. later he was trying to take off all of his clothes. so he gave up, and me, alex, and the girl tara went into jake’s room (by this point, jake had passed out next to the naked dude) while alec started to finish taking off his shirt. he got one arm off and was going for the other one. it was still around his neck too. so there were four of us standing around in the room, and as he was pulling off the last arm the guy kind of woke up and all of us just fell to the floor really fast HAHAHA. and the guy was like, “wow” and he WAS on his backside with his ass facing up but he turned so that his frontside was up and then grabbed a pillow to cover up his peener lol. me and alec were laughing so hard… the guy just went back to sleep!!! WTF! i can’t imagine being that drunk that you’d pass out and not wake up from people stripping you, but HEY, WHATEVER.

i’m listening to… a wilhelm scream and hong kong six. whatevers.

9:08 am — woke up in the morning and then drove to brett [buchholtz] [pwn]’s place in ellensburg. got lost there as usual but somehow managed to find his house. FUCK MAPQUEST. they always give me fucked up directions to his house. -__-

crammed myself into matt [buchholtz] [stretch]’s car, and we had to pile sleeping bags and stuff on top of ourselves hah. then we met up with the rest of the hoes @ rite-aid, and i got into brett [murphy] [weezy] & lindsey’s car. la la la. drove to the gorge and there was like no one there yet. this was around 11:30 to 12. i thought it had started @ 12, but we actually had perfect timing. as usual, the parking people told us to park somewhere, so we’d say OK and then wait a minute (or in this case 20 seconds) and then drive to another campsite, and proceed to take up about four-cars-worth of space to set up our tent in and shit.

then we went to the show just in time for the first acts, pretty much.

senses fail was the opening act on the main stage. the lead singer was like, “so everyone went out and got all punked out for warped tour, right? i know i did!!” and we were all like, “my god, what an idiot…”

there was honestly no one really worth mentioning except for armor for sleep. they were GREAT. i happened to see josh and cynthia (who flaked on going with me in the morning) @ armor, and that was cool. ARMOR IS SO GOOD. they’re so much better live than i had thought.

who else… this providence was kind of disappointing. the singer is SO very fruity. he’s a good-looking guy, but he’s like 17 (even though he’s like 20, 21). he’s… so fruity. my god. too fruity for me = fruity as fuck. i’ll bet most of their fans are girls. they’re a good-looking bunch of guys.

me and trask interviewed riley and teppei of thrice… it was kind of a last minute thing because their interview was going on when i found the press tent (wewps, they had different directions this year). they are alright guys, but you can tell they kind of think their music is the shit.

reggie & the full effect was pretty freakin great. james is a funny old man. they were wearing matching american eagle shirts. yeahhh.

my chemical romance’s lead singer gerard looks like a girl… however awesome he is. it’s not talking shit; it’s talking truths. when i went back to the press tent, i saw frank from mcr (who i interviewed last year), and he kept staring at me and smiling while he was talking to this other dude… so i should have waved or something! but i didn’t cause i’m stupid and shy. :[ and i didn’t want to ‘interupt’ his conversation, although he obviously wasn’t that engaged. nOoOoooOo!! i’m so mad at myself lol. -__- that bugged me for the rest of the day (i was going to talk to him when i went back, but he wasn’t around anymore T__T)… and now it’s bothering me again since i brought it up, grr.

interviewed two other guys from MCR with a lady from AMP magazine at around 7, and it was a weird group interview, and there were like 4 people in the room who were just there to watch and had nothing to do with the interview at all. i’m sure they were disappointed because the two people who came weren’t gerard and frank lol. mcr is too big now, it’s good and all but damnit, i wanted gerard and frank! redefine will get some credit in AMP for this, though, so that is fucking AWESOME.

night time was umm crazay! a lot of stuff happened, a lot of probably which i have forgotten, but i will try to remember. we had to wait around in the freezing cold for a long time because stretch (who had car keys) stayed around til the end (around 1030) and we left around 8-ish. to my stupidity, though, my stuff was actually in weezy’s car lol. so i froze for two hours for nothing!! anyway. shit. uhh. got drunk. lots of people asked for weed. weezy kept saying, “my wrist is broken. it’s limp. my hand is broken, it’s limp. my finger is broken, it’s limp. my arm is broken, it’s limp.” i forget why, though. crowd management services (CMS) kept walking around too, and they were being all stealthy and shit. some people were setting off fireworks, and they totally were like hiding behind cars and running out of nowhere to catch the people haha. their fault for setting off like eight fireworks in broad daylight. they also took all of the alcohol of some underage kids, and later caught us smoking weed with a random group of people (but luckily they didn’t care because no one had any on them, and they were just like, “we don’t care what you do in your tents, but try not to do anything out here.”) anyway, so the whole night everyone in our group kept shouting out, “CMS!!” or at some points, “INS!!!”

went to walk around a bunch of times. with different people. first time was with zach, pwn, weezy, and trask. we climbed up on this trailer and weezy jumped off and owned his heel LMAO.

so we were walkng back, and somehow we lost zach but he found his way back later. weezy was like, “my heel is broken.” lol. and then he just left after that. then me, zach, pwny, and matt [zach’s friend, i don’t know his last name] went out… and that was fun!!! met some dudes who smoked us out and one of us made us listen to his music… we totally could have stayed around for longer but zach wanted to go back because the weed + alcohol was not doing him good lol. pwny smoked out for the first time. it was my first time in like, god, at least a year and a half or something. but it was good, cause weed is always good with other things - usually OK by itself. met some kids who kept saying they needed some coke because they were too trashed and couldn’t stay up otherwise. the one who was relatively sober was like a giant drag queen or something, but whatever. more power.

went back and then went out again with lindsey and pwny. i had this random idea to go up to random people and be like, “WOW ____, I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN SO LONG!!!” and it’s funny, cause people are like, “oh yeah! i know!!! how are you doing!?” hahaha it’s fuckin funny. me and lindsey went, so pwny went up to this girl and was like, “HI AMY!!” and she didn’t even turn around lol >__< me and lindsey were like dying of laughter on the floor. went back to the potheads, and they had lost their keys and gotten their alcohol stolen. i guess a lot of people had their alcohol stolen. which sucks.

umm don’t remember what else happened. went back again and went back out with pwny… and uhh. met more random bitches. these people were trying to get everyone to sit down in the middle of the road, but that pretty much failed. some girl in the group was on shrooms. lol. and then some guy came to harass her, and she ran away. lucky spokane people! so easy to get shrooms!!!! >__<

when we were going to sleep some guy was threatening to kill himself because his girlfriend cheated on him or his girlfriend thought he cheated on her or something. and his friend was saying, “dont do it,” blahblahblah. cept later his girlfriend came by and was like, “i don’t care, kill yourself, you’re better off that way.” it was weird. the guy was bawling.

weezy passed out on the ground the whole night and i guess pwny had an escapade in a basketball court til 6am or something (when i was the only one awake, arrrrrghhhh). i woke up mad early and sat around for like half an hour talking to random neighbors and hoping someone would wake up. talked with the guy who was telling his friend not to commit suicide and that was um interesting. and some guy who said he drank a whole bottle of jack daniel’s. lol. man i dunno. then i went back to sleep cause there was no sign of anyone waking up.

we left and weezy’s sister whitney has FUCKED UP friends. she got dropped off at warped and then her friends took her car back to the show, and drove it to a campsite adn shit, leaving her behind. fucked up shit. friends like that, jeez. so we spent like a half hour trying to find her car and shit, so i was put into zach’s car while they looked for it some more (it wasn’t at the campgrounds we looked in initially, and her phone was dead, so she couldn’t call people), and so that weezy could yell @ her.

ate lunch at a restaurant like we did last year, and the combination between warped tour people and sunday parishoners was funry.

god, i’m sick of writing in journals. i’m sure i’ll think of plenty more.

i’m listening to… daphne loves derby’s new album, the strength of all convinced. i’ve listened to this album probably about 80,000 times. also, ruiner by a wilhelm scream (whatevers).
july 1st, day one, milan
ghetto. chinese tour groups are ghetto. they will try to rip you off however they can. but more about that later.

i am currently @ holiday inn, where there is wireless connection but i cannot figure out how to connect to it. most most tragic. :[

so it goes like this… 40,000 hours of plane ride. watched “million dollar baby” which was an alright movie at best. no idea why it won so many awards at all.

finally got here. got picked up to go to milan. blahblah. ate gelato, which all seem to be owned by asian people and don’t taste as good as one would imagine. saw the duomo cathedral, which is one of the largest - got partially destroyed during world war ii, blahblah. lots of trendy ass people in milan (fashion capital of italy, pretty much)… seems like the social class discrepancies between the rich and the old are really huge. me and sherry are wanting to have a contest to see who can gain the most weight. then we both went to eat another gelato. the second one i got was a banana one, and i had forgotten - banana gelatos are freaking gross. they’re calling gelati here… wonder why they’re called gelato in the u.s.

also this freaking chinese lady… she’s not in our tour group - she was just in the huge square outside of the cathedral… BLEH!!! horrible… she had a son and a daughter. the son kept capturing pigeons, and she kept grabbing them for him and putting it in his hands in a “certain way” as if it looked right… it looked like the pigeon’s wings were going to snap off. at some point, she put the pigeon in a plastic bag. i thought she was going to take it home and eat it or something, my god. turns out she poked a hole in the bag and put the plastic bag with the pigeon in it to her son. and her son dropped it. and it was just flopping around in a plastic bag. the woman reached for it and then thought, nevermind, and just left it there flopping around there on the ground. there were seriously so many people looking at her. finally an old dude went to tell her to let it go and she did, smiling and shit, thinking she was cool.

onwards… chinese tour groups suck. they don’t include tickets into the tour. they were supposed to book us in rooms of two but instead put us in a “three bedroom” room, which in fact is… two beds and one cot, which i assume will be mine.

also - we’re in italy. we’re only eating non-chinese food for two nights. the hypothesis? they get something for bringing all of these stupid tour groups. tonight we went to this nasty ass chinese place. seriously, the only people who were there were us and another tour group that came later (that had the same meal as us). that restaurant seriously only made like 6 dishes or something. we had three cabbage dishes. GRANTED they were three different KINDS of cabbage, but still. what the hell.
july 2nd, day two, verona & venice
juliette’s balcony is lame. verona is kind of cool looking, but beyond that, there’s nothing more but the myth of shakespeare’s play being held place there. and a couple streets that looked like cs_italy, but we later found that to be true (if not more true) in siena as well.

venice is cool, though. st. mark’s basillica doesn’t necessarily even have st. mark’s bones (just some dude’s)… and the italians made up some story about stealing it out of istanbul and covering it with pig meat so that the people would be digusted when they were checking through customs. no idea. umm lots of poeple, 2x the number of pigeons. expensive living. we saw a glass-blowing presenation (though i’ve seen one before in seattle, and this one was lame in comparison) - it was still cool though. found out how colors are put into glass… from infusing it with different metals. manganese makes the coolest purple color, copper = green, red = gold…

moving onwards… went on a gondola ride. it was like 30 euros a person for a 45 minute things. euro = more than the dollar, so it was quite a bit. my mom thought the gondola man was good-looking because he looked like jack nicholson. WTF. didn’t stay for long… went back and went to dinner. the food was definitely better, but still pretty bad.

afterwards, we went to our hotel all early and shit, and the kids (there are 10 of us, 11 if you count the girl di who came seperately with her family but hung out with us sometimes)… anyway, the 10 of us went out to dinner again, at this restaurant near our hotel. we got two tables, and the five people at the other table shared a pizza. the waitress got pissed. at our table, it was me, sherry, andy, nancy, and fontaine. we played some game where everyone has ten fingers up, and then we go around and peoplesay, “i’ve never ____” and if you have done the thing, then you put your fingers down. me and sherry were teh losers. :[ for the whole meal i got eaten by mosquitos, and my hand got all inflamed and itchy an shit. because it always does.
july 3rd, day three, pisa & florence
drove to pisa. pretty. lame. didn’t do anything, and it was hot. we just ate, but at least there was a cute waiter. me and sherry’s parents thought he was ugly, though, but my mom has no credibility since she thinks jack nicholson is good-looking. the parents made me put on like 10 kinds of medicine (okay, literally 5) - so a couple of them turned all rashy and shit. on the way back to our bus we took this bus, and sherry’s mom met this kid from south africa. they came with their school on a whole freakin trip of europe. LUCKY. left pisa. drove to florence.

saw the cathedral of santa maria del fiore, maria of the flower or whatever. the dome was painted by brunelleschi, and while it was inspired by “the last judgment” by michaelangelo in the sistine chapel, i’d have to say that brunelleschi’s was cooler, symbolically and just visually. anyway, the santa maria del fiore was a nice gothic-styled church… blahblah most people think that goth means like devil-worshippers and death and shit, but in-fact real goths are actually christians who made these immense, huge-ass churches that were only lit by outside lighting through stained glass windows, and their attribution to the darkness was actually because their churches were so dark. *NOW YOU KNOW. anyway.

bought a neato bracelet for 5 euros. there’s a long corridor in front of an art museum in florence, and it has sculptures of all these different artists, philosophers, architects, etc… like galileo, giotto, many others. it was pretty rad, even though i didn’t know most of them. also saw dante’s “girlfriend’s” family church (although from what i learned in class, she wasn’t actually his girlfriend, and the two barely even knew each other - he was just in love with her anyway). that was boring. walked through this corridor “rapidly” because apparently people were shooting other people with straws and toothpicks hahhaha. but we missed them.

then we went to a leather factory for literally 45 minutes. tours always make you go to little places where they can profit… so that they can make money off of comission and shit. that was boring. real boring. and they FEIGNED a demonstration. they just rolled some gold leaf on a leather trashcan instead of really giving us a leather demonstration… it was freakin lame as hell. they just wanted our moneh! anyways. afterwards, we went to eat at this ghetto chinese hole in the wall… but it was better food, for sure. stayed at the worst hotel ever at the night. had to sleep on this pull-out bed that was all freakin lumpy and shit, so instead i slept on the floor. woke up halfway through the night, though, cause the floor was too hard and it was owning my back, so then i had to go to sleep on the pillows… and my back hurt for the rest of the trip since that night ugh. in the morning, the hotel refused to give people seconds of eggs. italian people are freakin nazis. but more about that later.
july 4th, day four, siena & rome
in the morning, there was briefly free internet, so i got to check deviantart for ville’s number. was supposed to meet up with him in italy because he happened to be there @ the same exact time (he’s from norway). but i had no way of calling internationally, so that pretty much just sucked. turns out he wasn’t in siena that day anyway, because he ran out of money to leave florence. whatever.

siena was interesting. lots of brick buildings with an outer wall surrounding the city that is built on a hill (siena was originally a different country from italy… but it got conquered. owned, biatch… would have liked to see how they got conquered, though, considering the ownage location). found a spot on the outer wall where you could climb up… would have climbed up more but it’s just um scary. narrow ass streets. didn’t really do much, though. once again, we just ate a meal, which was the best one we had in all of italy. yummy ummy yumm T__T then we left and went to rome. four hour drive of doom. for two of the hours, me, sherry, and bonnie were brainstorming up a castle. this was all sparked by my desire to be married in a castle. many people helped. the picture will be scannd later, but basically, our castle had vin diesel as the shrek of a swamp outside of our castle, rocket man who helped carry people over the castle walls (the dragon who lived in our castle also helped carry people over), bow man and arrow man (who were in the watchtower), noah’s ark (in the moat), and um… you’d have to see it.

rome was pretty freakin rad. at night we went up to a lookout point the hotel told us to visit. we felt like “real” italians because it’s a hangout for italians… minus the fact that our parents came oo, and the result was that we were travelling in huge packs of chinese fob tourists. i suppose. got a crappy cot for sleeping in at night sigh. my dad took the sleeping, though, cause he claimed it was comfortable huk T__T
july 5th, day five, rome
went to the vatican city. BORING. st. peter’s basillica is fucking ridiculous and mostly just pisses me off. the place is so freakin nuts. gold on the ceiling, huge sculptures, marble everything. made in 120 years. how creepy. you’d have to see it to belief how pompous and how ridiculous it all is. the “pieta” is there. who cares. the only cool thing about this place was the golden altar. it’s like a relief sculpture with these rays of sunlight or something coming out of it. looks really abstract and pretty rad. but the church is truly disgusting. i was so disgusted by it the whole time - just wanted to leave and talk shit about it, really. the catholic church only looks so nice because when they were losing power back in the day to other branches of christianity, they decided to commision all of these hardcore art pieces and awesome looking churches to “attract” people. OBVIOUSLY it worked, but how pretentious is this? on the floor of the church, in the CENTER of the church, it shows how “small” other churches are in comparison to that one. to make it worse, the vatican shop sold shot glasses and candles with the pope’s face on it. talk about ridiculous religious iconography.

afterwards, we went to the trivoli fountain which is SO FUCKING AWESOME. the most awesome fountain i’ve seen yet, that’s for sure. and we also went to the pantheon (which is seriously, absolutely whatevers… who the hell cares. it is probably the MOST boring place we went to on the whole trip). then we went to the vatican museum. this was OPTIONAL. it was either, go to the vatican museum and the sistine chapel, or go to SHOPPING. everyone went to the vatican museum, i’m pretty sure, because it OWNS THE FUCK OUT OF SHOPPING. vatican museum was the best part of the whole trip. lots of awesome little tapestries and paintings and crap, mostly of bible stories. or just stories in general. the raphael room wins all. each wall represented a different thing: theology, poetry, philosophy, and justice (random). very awesome. wish i could have spent a whole day in that museum actually, minus the hurting neck (because there were so many paintings on the ceiling and shit). there was also a constantine room which was cool too - each wall depicted a different portion of his life. there was also a modern art portion, which were like eight rooms, and SHERRY AND I WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE THERE. we saw probably two people the whole time, and they just walked really briskly through. saw a lot of crap pieces and a couple of awesome ones. there was a painting by renaldo guttuso which was soooo awesome. i tried looking for it online and couldn’t find it, but his art is something like this:

lots of crap out of his good art too, but hey, whatever. there was this one piece that was like stained glass, but it had a backlight to it, and i dunno, i totally tripped out on it like i was hallucinating. it was so weird. there were a couple of other pieces that tripped me out too, but whatever. the sistine chapel took pretty much forever to walk to, but omg, it is freakin sweet. bought a book on all of the symbology, so i look forward to finishing reading it. too bad i forgot everything i learned from my two classes on italy / italian art.

we actually had italian food, though, for ONCE. we had an accordian / guitar / opera singer too, who had a CD with a place where they could sign their signatures. hah. weird. people actually bought it. WHY I DON’T KNOW. the pasta was gross, though. i could have made better pasta out of cream of mushroom soup, but the atmosphere was cool i guess. after dinner we walked to the coliseum. it was quite the walk. quite the walk indeed. met a guy named secundo who was missing a finger and keptspeaking just italian to us like we knew what he was talking about or something lol. but he was nice. there was also another dude who was like, “okay, walk to the end of this street, make a left, and then ask someone else.” auntie ruby asked a bunch of tourists for directions, lol, and they were just like hell if i know. climbed shit to take awesome photos of the coliseum (damn trees)… walked the ruins. saw an awesome guy who made fucking awesome art out of spraypaint. wish we could have stayed to watch it for longer, but no one seemed to care really. good shit. rome is humbling in a way. sure, the whole roman empire was a bunch of jackasses, but at least they were amazing jackasses.
july 6th, day 6, pompeii
saw the ruined city. pretty interesting, but they should definitely keep the plastered people… i guess people stole a bunch of shit from there, so they hide all of the cool stuff and put it into museums :[ what’s left there now is just the buildings, mostly. umm how they make plasters of the dead people is… the people get buried, and then the hardened lava makes a shell around their bodies, and then the interior decomposes, and you’re just left with the bones and a shall around the bodies… so then they inject plaster into the shell to make hard, movable people. quite the interest. ummm… yeah there’s nothing much to say other than that. +__+ at night we almost walked like 45 minutes to go eat gelato, but then decided to turn back and just ate ice cream at some place across the street from our hotel. [[NOTE APRIL 2008 — I’M NOT SURE WHY I WROTE SO LITTLE ABOUT POMPEII CONSIDERING IT WAS PROBABLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE PLACES ON THE TRIP T__T NOTABLE POINTS INCLUDE THAT THERE WAS A RED LIGHT DISTRICT THERE AND EVIDENCE OF STOREFRONTS WITH SLIDING GLASS DOORS]]
july 7th, day 7, capri, naples, & rome
my last day in italy. went to capri, which is like this island. on the way there we took this bumpy ass big boat and somehow i fell asleep, but most people felt pretty sick afterwards. then we took a boat on a tour around the island, and that was pretty rad. the sunlight / limestone combination makes the water this really pretty green color… and at some places the limestone turned into sheets of marble, and the light turned the water into this really green emerald type color. after that, we took a bus to the top of the mountain, and the streets are hugely narrow… they all have the most nuts driving skills. ate dinner at the top of the mountain with a view overlooking the water sorta. it was a whatevers meal, and my last italian meal of the trip :[ on the way down, it took probably about half the time, and most of the people on the bus were scared out of their minds lol. on the way back we stood outside because there weren’t any good seats on the boat, and just were there for 30 minutes with the seasalt and wind blinding our eyes and stuff. but somehow it was fun. afterwards we stopped briefly in naples (which was not intended, i don’t think) and had a bit of time to walk around - the only thing around was this castle nueva… but we coudn’t go in because it is now a museum :[ is naples named after napoleon? does anyone know? because the houses look like… french. and everything seems frenchish. we ate CHINESE FOOD for dinner. can you believe that. the last day of the tour in italy and they take you to eat chinese food?!!! at night people just came over to our place and we played cards, and that’s that!!!
july 8th, day 8, goodbye italy!
hello 24 hours of consecutive airport / airplane time!!! DEATH. lenny picked me up at the airport (HE ORIGINALLY THOUGHT IT WAS 10 AM AND WAS THE AIRPORT WAITING OFR LIKE THREE HOURS HAHAHA HUK) and we just sat around and stuff with liz, eva, and alex… and then josh kept calling me to tell me to go to dante’s (bar), so i went there to watch people drink and stuff, and it was alright. afterwards, lenny and i went over to cynthia / chol / jennie’s, and we watched part of “hitch” (which i had seen on the plane earlier that day, along with “robots inc.”) but we didn’t finish it cause josh and cyn fell asleep, and we just went home instead and um stuff.
SUMMATIONS OF THIS TRIP:
- ate a lof of watery scrambled eggs (because that’s how they make em).
- saw a lot of graffiti… italy has an INSANE amount of graffiti on old-school buildings. it’s seriously nuts - a lot of people didn’t like it, but i thought it was mostly rad, despite the fact that a lot of it was relatively shitty and a poor excuse for artwork. if you want to see some cool artowrk, check out http://www.brosart.com/. they tagged their address in a lot of places, and they had some awesome stuff. not the best out of all of it, but some really good stuff nonetheless.
- italy is a weird country - from city to city it looks completely different, and it might as well be a different country altogether. inbetween the cities is nothing but farmland and bits and pieces of ruined old castles and shit.
- lots of people with trendy ass clothing, especially in milan.
- my mom bought way too many “pi jian” which are like those giant scarves you drape over you. why, i don’t know. other moms too.
- learned how to play hearts. i SUCK.
- ate a ton of hazelnut spread (ie: nutella).
- ate a ton of gelato, but i was not impressed really. i found that a lot of places in america have better gelato / gelato flavors. >__<
- listened to like 3 CDs 80 times each. at least 12 times each, i’d say. the CDs were new albums by the myriad, facing new york, and daphne loves derby. i had a couple others too, but they weren’t really worth listening to more than once.
- saw very few hot guys… i was counting, and i probably saw only about three.
- mullet mohawks are all the rage. r0x.
- my dad told me my belt looked punk (WTF?!) and asked me if i was trying to be a punk. i said no, but i like their clothing. he said, they’re the ugliest. i said, i like it. when i came back to seattle, my mom was like, try not to be too punk, okay?