Pretty good first game to start off the season, and props to all the Michigan State fans for being so well-traveled. 38-31 was a bit scary, but that was one of the more exciting fourth quarters in recent memory, considering that both teams scores double digits in the fourth quarter but only ten or fewer points in each of the previous three.
But I'm not a great football analyst; we'll leave that to the greats at CGB. I do, however, have a contributing moment. (Pre: If you know anything about KNak and how he acts during sporting events, the following description should be no surprise to you.)
The band is standing on the sidelines waiting for halftime to begin (by the way: down at 5:00? Really, though? We were there longer than fucking 'Nam). Nate Longshore just threw his second pick. The crowd boos, and as usual, KNak opens his oft-used The American Standard Dictionary of Swears, Curses, Obscenities, and Miscellaneous Verbal Dickslaps and really piles it on poor Longshore. We're standing literally ten feet away from the football team, and I'm trying to get him to shut up, but to no avail. Eventually he calms down and instead just mutters to himself as if he were a schizo locked up in a dark corner somewhere, like John Forbes Nash or Britney Spears.
But then Kevin Riley gets put back in under center and immediately turns the momentum of the game around, throwing for 42 and 24 yards, eventually leading to a TD run in by Jahvid "The Jet" Best...all in the course of 54 seconds.
KNak immediately begins the loudest personal "KEVIN RILEY *clap clap clapclapclap*" chant I've ever heard a single person produce. The problem/fucking hilarious part is that nobody else did it with him. He was a lone soldier in a sea of "dude shut the fuck up." Regardless, KNak kept this up on his own for a good two minutes. I was laughing my ass off with my back turned to him, and so were a few of the fans in the stands right next to us. And so, with much flourish and aplomb, KNak introduced his true self to the frightened newman class of 2008.
Small moment it may be, but these are the little things that I like to keep in my memory.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Semantics be damned
A conversation in the car, driving down Telegraph.
SRS: "We should go get Ethiopian food again sometime."
Me: "Sure. Speaking of which, at Davis, the Coke that we got had the special Olympics edition cans with "Coca-Cola" written in different languages, and one of them was Ethiopic."
G-Unit: "You mean Olympics Special Edition cans."
Me: "Isn't that what I said?"
SRS: "No, you said special Olympics edition."
Me: "Oops. I meant Olympics Special Edition."
A couple minutes pass.
Me: "I was hoping China's can would say the normal "Coca-Cola" on one side and "Coca-Cora" on the other."
SRS: "Except Chinese Coke would probably have some actual cocaine and some leftover girl fetus parts."
Another minute passes without speech.
Me: "I wonder what would be written for the Special Olympics edition cans."
G-Unit: "Dude. That's fucked up."
Me: "Probably 'duhraewrhuCOooOOoca CeahREAFooragh.'"
SRS: "We should go get Ethiopian food again sometime."
Me: "Sure. Speaking of which, at Davis, the Coke that we got had the special Olympics edition cans with "Coca-Cola" written in different languages, and one of them was Ethiopic."
G-Unit: "You mean Olympics Special Edition cans."
Me: "Isn't that what I said?"
SRS: "No, you said special Olympics edition."
Me: "Oops. I meant Olympics Special Edition."
A couple minutes pass.
Me: "I was hoping China's can would say the normal "Coca-Cola" on one side and "Coca-Cora" on the other."
SRS: "Except Chinese Coke would probably have some actual cocaine and some leftover girl fetus parts."
Another minute passes without speech.
Me: "I wonder what would be written for the Special Olympics edition cans."
G-Unit: "Dude. That's fucked up."
Me: "Probably 'duhraewrhuCOooOOoca CeahREAFooragh.'"
Monday, August 11, 2008
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Patrick Chung's slow-ass face
I left this town in 2005 with the idea that nothing new or exciting ever really happens around these parts, which is why I decided to come back as little as possible. Palo Alto is to great place to grow up and great place to retire, but not a good place for someone in the prime of his life to hang around - kind of like salmonella living in your colon. (Salmonella, the bug responsible for typhoid, is transmitted via the fecal-oral route. This literally gives the phrase "Typhoid Mary: a lady in the street but a freak in the bed" a new world of meaning.)
Surprise, surprise: I've been back in Palo Alto for all of eighteen hours and already some spongeworthy things have happened.
Exciting happening number one: the UC Berkeley presence in the heart of downtown Palo Alto apparently has increased fifteen bajillion-fold. Walking down University Ave. with long-lost pal Jugant, we passed by The Sports Gallery. It's a nice, high-end sports memorabilia store that, growing up, I had always seen while in downtown but never really cared about, since most of their stuff was about teams or sports I didn't really care about, i.e. beisbol, U$C, ice hockey, Stanford (well okay a little bit, but not enough to buy the stuff), and all those other unimportant teams not named "The San Francisco 49ers."
On this sunny Bay Area day, however, as we casually strolled by The Sports Gallery on our way to Pizza My Heart, blurry familiar images flashed just outside the periphery of my right side, definitely enough to make me do a double take.
Script Cal...? Blue and gold helmet? Whaaassa haaappen?
It was a "BEAST MODE-AUTOGRAPHED MEMORABILIA ALL OVER THE WINDOW DISPLAY AND THE STORE SHELVES wait I think my pants are damp and warm yep there it is" moment.
Long story short, with the help of a little government tax return, I am now the proud new owner of my favorite moment of Cal football 2006, except this time it's actually WORTH SOMETHING:
Gordon: 1, Patrick Chung: still -$12,974.72 for mandible surgical repair and psychiatric therapy.
AND! The day goes on! I also put a down payment for a BEAST MODE-autographed replica full-size helmet.
But all would not go as planned for the day. Unfortunately, having just returned from LA, I had not yet done all my laundry, and so the only clothing I had left was one of my UCLA shirts, a simple gray shirt that writes "University of California Los Angeles." Simple, unpretentious, non-bombastic (I love that word).
After making my order at the Starbucks on this very same street that finally gave me a reason to love downtown Palo Alto, my love shattered in pieces like the skull of a newborn Chinese girl against hard concrete.
THE DOUCHEBAG BARISTA AT THE STARBUCKS WROTE "GO TROJANS" ON MY CUP. This was, of course, unacceptable, and so, with my ever-handy mini-Sharpie, I made the world right once again:
I can see the conference talk now:
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this afternoon. In collaboration with a number of many of the best universities in the country, we would now like to present the conclusions of our twenty-year study on the correlation between the quality of tertiary education and post-graduation careers in the United States.
Among the most prominent examples of considerable success came from the University of California, Berkeley, widely cited as not only the best public research university in the country but the entire world over. What does a Berkeley degree mean in the country? We have found that it results in highly-sought attributes such as eternal leadership of prime marching bands, freaking hot/top-flight athletes, and the eventual ability to become hotshot dentists who can establish themselves in Santa Monica and purchase really, really badass cars, like a Mercedes C63 AMG.
(No, you can't tell that's an AMG, but trust me, it is, it's fucking sexy, and it belongs to my cousin, MCB '91.)
Unfortunately, we have found that the spectrum for this correlation is rather wide. On the other end of the spectrum, we now list a prime example from some school in the Los Angeles vicinity: nothing more than a minimum-wage barista working for a company rapidly shutting down hundreds of locations across the country.
The Trojan Network: your gateway to crappy coffee and steamed milk.
Surprise, surprise: I've been back in Palo Alto for all of eighteen hours and already some spongeworthy things have happened.
Exciting happening number one: the UC Berkeley presence in the heart of downtown Palo Alto apparently has increased fifteen bajillion-fold. Walking down University Ave. with long-lost pal Jugant, we passed by The Sports Gallery. It's a nice, high-end sports memorabilia store that, growing up, I had always seen while in downtown but never really cared about, since most of their stuff was about teams or sports I didn't really care about, i.e. beisbol, U$C, ice hockey, Stanford (well okay a little bit, but not enough to buy the stuff), and all those other unimportant teams not named "The San Francisco 49ers."
On this sunny Bay Area day, however, as we casually strolled by The Sports Gallery on our way to Pizza My Heart, blurry familiar images flashed just outside the periphery of my right side, definitely enough to make me do a double take.
Script Cal...? Blue and gold helmet? Whaaassa haaappen?
It was a "BEAST MODE-AUTOGRAPHED MEMORABILIA ALL OVER THE WINDOW DISPLAY AND THE STORE SHELVES wait I think my pants are damp and warm yep there it is" moment.
Long story short, with the help of a little government tax return, I am now the proud new owner of my favorite moment of Cal football 2006, except this time it's actually WORTH SOMETHING:
Gordon: 1, Patrick Chung: still -$12,974.72 for mandible surgical repair and psychiatric therapy.
AND! The day goes on! I also put a down payment for a BEAST MODE-autographed replica full-size helmet.
But all would not go as planned for the day. Unfortunately, having just returned from LA, I had not yet done all my laundry, and so the only clothing I had left was one of my UCLA shirts, a simple gray shirt that writes "University of California Los Angeles." Simple, unpretentious, non-bombastic (I love that word).
After making my order at the Starbucks on this very same street that finally gave me a reason to love downtown Palo Alto, my love shattered in pieces like the skull of a newborn Chinese girl against hard concrete.
THE DOUCHEBAG BARISTA AT THE STARBUCKS WROTE "GO TROJANS" ON MY CUP. This was, of course, unacceptable, and so, with my ever-handy mini-Sharpie, I made the world right once again:
I can see the conference talk now:
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this afternoon. In collaboration with a number of many of the best universities in the country, we would now like to present the conclusions of our twenty-year study on the correlation between the quality of tertiary education and post-graduation careers in the United States.
Among the most prominent examples of considerable success came from the University of California, Berkeley, widely cited as not only the best public research university in the country but the entire world over. What does a Berkeley degree mean in the country? We have found that it results in highly-sought attributes such as eternal leadership of prime marching bands, freaking hot/top-flight athletes, and the eventual ability to become hotshot dentists who can establish themselves in Santa Monica and purchase really, really badass cars, like a Mercedes C63 AMG.
(No, you can't tell that's an AMG, but trust me, it is, it's fucking sexy, and it belongs to my cousin, MCB '91.)
Unfortunately, we have found that the spectrum for this correlation is rather wide. On the other end of the spectrum, we now list a prime example from some school in the Los Angeles vicinity: nothing more than a minimum-wage barista working for a company rapidly shutting down hundreds of locations across the country.
The Trojan Network: your gateway to crappy coffee and steamed milk.
Friday, August 8, 2008
When the Moon is in the Seventh House
Did a couple of planets line up wrong today or something? Did Pluto decide that it had had enough of all the other planets bullying him around, making hm feel all inferior and shit?
"Fuck you guys, let's see how well your God-almighty alignment bullcrap works now, assholes!"
Today is my last day in The City of Angels, and all of these events occurred today:
-While packing, the books on the top shelf toppled down, resulting in a superficial gash of three inches on my right upper arm
-The 2008 Olympics in Beijing opened with a show that Pat Forde of ESPN.com claims was "the great show in Opening Ceremony history"
-Min, the woman in the lab bay next time mine, gave birth today a healthy baby boy via caesarian
-The apartment four doors down from ours, with the magic of a bug bomb and microwave technorogy, somehow managed to make both the bug bomb AND the microwave explode...at the same time. The resulting explosion was what led to said books toppling, leading to said gash on said arm.
I was getting my personal belongings together when, at around 1:30pm, the apartment gave me one bigass, motherfuckin violent shake-down and a rather loud, frightening boom. My first instinct was, "Hey Gaia, give us a little break, will ya?" I stopped and stood under the doorframe, getting ready to stabilize myself when I realized that there were no more tremors. One big shake, and that was it. "...not a quake. So what the hell was it?" As I wiped the proverbial poop out of my pants, Brett comes back into the apartment and asks, "Dude, have you been here the whole time? How come I didn't see you outside?" Inside, I was thinking, "Well, we're not really friends at all; as a matter of fact, I kind of hate you, so why would I bother looking for you," but the Microsoft Word editing program in my brain changed it to, "Nope. Why?"
Brett: "There was an explosion on our floor, dude. I've been standing outside for the past ten minutes because the fire department evacuated our floor. It was, like, fucking epic. Epic."
Me: "...shit. I felt and heard it, but I didn't know what it was, and it was over pretty quick, so I just didn't worry about it."
Brett: "There was an alarm. You didn't hear it? It was pretty fucking epic."
Me: "...no."
Brett: "Wow, dude. But it's okay now, they let us back in."
Me: "No shit."
[edit 7:14PM]
Upon taking out the trash, I walked by this gaping hole in the wall. This was about 40 feet away from the door of our unit.
"Fuck you guys, let's see how well your God-almighty alignment bullcrap works now, assholes!"
Today is my last day in The City of Angels, and all of these events occurred today:
-While packing, the books on the top shelf toppled down, resulting in a superficial gash of three inches on my right upper arm
-The 2008 Olympics in Beijing opened with a show that Pat Forde of ESPN.com claims was "the great show in Opening Ceremony history"
-Min, the woman in the lab bay next time mine, gave birth today a healthy baby boy via caesarian
-The apartment four doors down from ours, with the magic of a bug bomb and microwave technorogy, somehow managed to make both the bug bomb AND the microwave explode...at the same time. The resulting explosion was what led to said books toppling, leading to said gash on said arm.
I was getting my personal belongings together when, at around 1:30pm, the apartment gave me one bigass, motherfuckin violent shake-down and a rather loud, frightening boom. My first instinct was, "Hey Gaia, give us a little break, will ya?" I stopped and stood under the doorframe, getting ready to stabilize myself when I realized that there were no more tremors. One big shake, and that was it. "...not a quake. So what the hell was it?" As I wiped the proverbial poop out of my pants, Brett comes back into the apartment and asks, "Dude, have you been here the whole time? How come I didn't see you outside?" Inside, I was thinking, "Well, we're not really friends at all; as a matter of fact, I kind of hate you, so why would I bother looking for you," but the Microsoft Word editing program in my brain changed it to, "Nope. Why?"
Brett: "There was an explosion on our floor, dude. I've been standing outside for the past ten minutes because the fire department evacuated our floor. It was, like, fucking epic. Epic."
Me: "...shit. I felt and heard it, but I didn't know what it was, and it was over pretty quick, so I just didn't worry about it."
Brett: "There was an alarm. You didn't hear it? It was pretty fucking epic."
Me: "...no."
Brett: "Wow, dude. But it's okay now, they let us back in."
Me: "No shit."
[edit 7:14PM]
Upon taking out the trash, I walked by this gaping hole in the wall. This was about 40 feet away from the door of our unit.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Like a girthquake of 9.0 on the Dickter scale. In the butt.
Sitting in lab waiting for my gel to finish running, I fell into my usual routine of perusing through my GReader subscriptions. Among them is the funniest football blog to nail your crotch to the wall, Every Day Should Be Saturday, winner of multiple CFB blog awards, home to Gators superfans Misters Orson Swindle and Spencer Hall (they have sort of a Jekyll & Hyde/"Wonder Twins powers activate" thing going), home of the Philip Fulmer Cup (registry of infractions and crimes attributed to any college football team in the country), and home of the world's smallest big-screen TV. AND! He updates multiple times a day, ensuring that every day when I wake up, my first thought will be "I wonder what stupid kid on what famous football team got arrested?" followed by "Need to scratch" and "aaaaah."
The countdown picture for today was this searing sight:
November Tenth, Two Thousand and Seven The Year of Our Lord.
That was the day my sax died, after standing in the rain for 4 hours, our brave little band standing shoulder to shoulder, huddled close trying to get as warm as possible. But I can still vividly remember Hawkins' amazing touchdown when he did this amazing horizontal leap. Through all the blur of the rain and the cold, for a second, it looked as if he were literally flying through the air. "The Hawk can fly! The Hawk can FLY!" we exclaimed, as if we were Wendy, John and Michael after snorting that sparkly shit that Tinkerbell gave them and told them to "think of the happiest things." But, by George, what a game. Looking back on the Note I wrote regarding that game, I stated then,
"But every single one of us stood there in the cold rain looking down on our Golden Bears and believing with every last ounce of our bodies and minds that we could pull it off. We stayed until the end. We always will.
We may have lost tonight, but tonight, I have never felt more proud to be a Cal Bandsman or a child of this fair mistress by the sea.
GO BEARS."
And then I spent a week with Lewis Black's drug of choice, NyQuil. I bought the bottle and threw the cap away because who the fuck needs measured volumes? The more the merrier, I say, when NyQuil is ever involved.
The countdown picture for today was this searing sight:
November Tenth, Two Thousand and Seven The Year of Our Lord.
That was the day my sax died, after standing in the rain for 4 hours, our brave little band standing shoulder to shoulder, huddled close trying to get as warm as possible. But I can still vividly remember Hawkins' amazing touchdown when he did this amazing horizontal leap. Through all the blur of the rain and the cold, for a second, it looked as if he were literally flying through the air. "The Hawk can fly! The Hawk can FLY!" we exclaimed, as if we were Wendy, John and Michael after snorting that sparkly shit that Tinkerbell gave them and told them to "think of the happiest things." But, by George, what a game. Looking back on the Note I wrote regarding that game, I stated then,
"But every single one of us stood there in the cold rain looking down on our Golden Bears and believing with every last ounce of our bodies and minds that we could pull it off. We stayed until the end. We always will.
We may have lost tonight, but tonight, I have never felt more proud to be a Cal Bandsman or a child of this fair mistress by the sea.
GO BEARS."
And then I spent a week with Lewis Black's drug of choice, NyQuil. I bought the bottle and threw the cap away because who the fuck needs measured volumes? The more the merrier, I say, when NyQuil is ever involved.
Unstoppable Force, Meet Immovable Object.
Every once in a while, you will hear or read something so perplexing, so baffling in the ass-backwards-ness of the logic attempted, that you can't help but think, "What if the Nazis were right?" (Not that I'm endorsing anything the Nazis did, except perhaps invent the Volkswagen.)
Murphy: "Dark Knight sucked."
Me: "What? Why?"
...blah blah blah...and now the punch line:
Murphy: "The Joker had no depth."
Me: "Did you listen to anything he said?"
Murphy: "Yeah, he talked WAY TOO MUCH. He says he's an agent of chaos. So why did he spend so much time talking about it? Why didn't he just do it? His too much talking made him a shallow character."
And before I could respond, he left. Here, then, is my concise dissection of the argument: if you think The Joker had no depth as a character, how does taking away his dialogue and his well-portrayed, well-organized mind games, and therefore making him MORE one-dimensional, add depth to him? I didn't even have to say anything to contradict what you said. You contradicted yourself entirely within twenty seconds. Making The Joker a single-layered killing machine makes him more one-dimensional, therefore making him a more shallow character. He's not meant to be a random mysterious force of pure death; the dialogue is IMPORTANT to The Joker's character and who he is. He doesn't just create chaos on a macro-world level; he wants to break down people from within as well, which was the entire point of enacting his incredibly roundabout plan to reach his ultimate goal of corrupting Dent.
Thank God you're not a real film major. You'd fail out so fast.
Murphy: "Dark Knight sucked."
Me: "What? Why?"
...blah blah blah...and now the punch line:
Murphy: "The Joker had no depth."
Me: "Did you listen to anything he said?"
Murphy: "Yeah, he talked WAY TOO MUCH. He says he's an agent of chaos. So why did he spend so much time talking about it? Why didn't he just do it? His too much talking made him a shallow character."
And before I could respond, he left. Here, then, is my concise dissection of the argument: if you think The Joker had no depth as a character, how does taking away his dialogue and his well-portrayed, well-organized mind games, and therefore making him MORE one-dimensional, add depth to him? I didn't even have to say anything to contradict what you said. You contradicted yourself entirely within twenty seconds. Making The Joker a single-layered killing machine makes him more one-dimensional, therefore making him a more shallow character. He's not meant to be a random mysterious force of pure death; the dialogue is IMPORTANT to The Joker's character and who he is. He doesn't just create chaos on a macro-world level; he wants to break down people from within as well, which was the entire point of enacting his incredibly roundabout plan to reach his ultimate goal of corrupting Dent.
Thank God you're not a real film major. You'd fail out so fast.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
"All I Wanna Do Is (BANG BANG BANG BANG)/
...and (CLICK kaCHING) and take your money" - Paper Planes, M.I.A.
I'm sitting in lab on Thursday, bored out of my mind because I have to wait for this three-hour water bath incubation to finish. I'm on 1.5 hours and I didn't realize watching the second clock buzz away (yes, buzz, not tick - we roll with Rolex, motherfuckers) could be so much fun. I mean, at least if I'm bored in lecture, there's still somebody constantly dispelling information that I might find useful at some point.
At around 4pm, our good ol' non-oxymoronic German-Jew friend Murphy calls me and says, "Hey, two things: 1) I'm drunk right now (he just finished his finals for summer school) and 2) the premiere for Pineapple Express is happening in a couple hours at the Mann Village. Wanna go check it out?" I figure, why the hell not? I'm not doing anything with these two hours anyways, might as well go see some skanky-ass hos and starstruck morons ripping each other to shreds for maybe a hope of a chance to get their pinkies within five feet of a celebrity and consequently claim the Holy Right. Right?
And here...we...go: [click on any picture to enlarge]
The scene at around 5:00pm. Not too many folks yet.
Judd Apatow. One of the first guests to arrive, surprisingly early (the bigger names usually don't arrive until later, close to the time the movie starts). Also, super genius.
LLOYD!!! of Entourage in the jeans and white/green shirt, Rex Lee.
Murphy: "Looks like he's put on a little weight."
Me: "So has your mom, but that hasn't stopped me from loving her daily and nightly and ever so rightly."
Murphy: "...so basically you're saying you would fuck Lloyd."
Me: "...No. Bad joke on my part."
Murphy: "Yeah, don't forget to close the door on your way out of the closet. We don't want Tom Cruise roaming the streets unchecked."
Me: "Douche."
Murphy: "Queer."
STANLEY! of The Office.
Me: "Mr. Baker! Mr. Baker!"
Leslie David Baker: continues walking right past me.
Me: sad.
The worst picture of Leslie David Baker ever taken. There's 6.7 billion people in the world; somewhere out there, there HAS to be an award for this, right? Isn't it the American way to celebrate every little thing, no matter how mediocre?
Me: "Mr. Voight! Mr. Voight! My cousin went to Beverly Hills with Angelina! They were in the same graduating class! (True story.) That makes us, like, practically cousins, right?"
Murphy: "Shut...the...FUCK...UP. God damn, I'm sobering up."
[Picture of James Franco should be right here, except that since we went to the same high school and had a bunch of the same teachers, I'm basically his long-lost, unattractive, nerdy brother. So no need.]
And of course, the man of the hour, Seth Rogen. The crowd literally EXPLODED. This one dumb bitch standing next to me sounded EXACTLY like what I am writing right now: "OHMAIGAWOHMAIGAAAAAWD ITSETHITSETHITSETH ILUVHIMILUVHIMILUVHIM" and so on and so forth. She went on for a good thirty seconds. Without breathing. I want to punch her in the gut for her own good. A girl needs to breathe once in a while, ya know? Wouldn't want an ambulance to ruin the whole event. And she just needed to shut the fuck up. I'm basically the best teacher some of these people have ever met.
I'm still beyond myself how I managed to get such a great shot of him, considering 1) I had to reach as high as I could for this angle and 2) it was literally a mosh pit of people pushing, clawing, and swearing like sailors, trying to get Seth to sign pictures and posters.
Murphy: "Seth! From a Jew to a Jew!"
Me: "What does that even mean?"
Murphy: "It's a Jew thing. You wouldn't understand."
And so Murphy and I were about to leave. We figured that since all the big stars were here and it was around 7:15pm, that was the end of the red carpet event. But just as we were about to turn and walk away, another car pulls up. "Who the hell?" we asked each other.
Jonah Hill. Last to show, longest car. And this would have been a much better shot were it not for MURPHY'S TARD HAND BLOCKING HIS FACE.
Murphy: "Jonah! Let me shake your hand! Can I please shake your hand? You're my hero!"
Ignored entirely. He was practically in tears (at least, on the inside, I hope).
And so, at the end of the day, we had gotten to see some pretty big stars, and we were happy especially considering these were stars we actually sort of care about because we love their movies so much. But I wasn't crying over not having gotten an autograph or not having gotten a picture with some stars, like some of these girls were. Really, a red carpet premiere is sort of cool, but ultimately pretty pointless. These people don't look any different in person than on the screen because this is such a highly public event that they'll of course come out looking their Sunday best.
One more week left here in Los Angeles.
I'm sitting in lab on Thursday, bored out of my mind because I have to wait for this three-hour water bath incubation to finish. I'm on 1.5 hours and I didn't realize watching the second clock buzz away (yes, buzz, not tick - we roll with Rolex, motherfuckers) could be so much fun. I mean, at least if I'm bored in lecture, there's still somebody constantly dispelling information that I might find useful at some point.
At around 4pm, our good ol' non-oxymoronic German-Jew friend Murphy calls me and says, "Hey, two things: 1) I'm drunk right now (he just finished his finals for summer school) and 2) the premiere for Pineapple Express is happening in a couple hours at the Mann Village. Wanna go check it out?" I figure, why the hell not? I'm not doing anything with these two hours anyways, might as well go see some skanky-ass hos and starstruck morons ripping each other to shreds for maybe a hope of a chance to get their pinkies within five feet of a celebrity and consequently claim the Holy Right. Right?
And here...we...go: [click on any picture to enlarge]
The scene at around 5:00pm. Not too many folks yet.
Judd Apatow. One of the first guests to arrive, surprisingly early (the bigger names usually don't arrive until later, close to the time the movie starts). Also, super genius.
LLOYD!!! of Entourage in the jeans and white/green shirt, Rex Lee.
Murphy: "Looks like he's put on a little weight."
Me: "So has your mom, but that hasn't stopped me from loving her daily and nightly and ever so rightly."
Murphy: "...so basically you're saying you would fuck Lloyd."
Me: "...No. Bad joke on my part."
Murphy: "Yeah, don't forget to close the door on your way out of the closet. We don't want Tom Cruise roaming the streets unchecked."
Me: "Douche."
Murphy: "Queer."
STANLEY! of The Office.
Me: "Mr. Baker! Mr. Baker!"
Leslie David Baker: continues walking right past me.
Me: sad.
The worst picture of Leslie David Baker ever taken. There's 6.7 billion people in the world; somewhere out there, there HAS to be an award for this, right? Isn't it the American way to celebrate every little thing, no matter how mediocre?
Me: "Mr. Voight! Mr. Voight! My cousin went to Beverly Hills with Angelina! They were in the same graduating class! (True story.) That makes us, like, practically cousins, right?"
Murphy: "Shut...the...FUCK...UP. God damn, I'm sobering up."
[Picture of James Franco should be right here, except that since we went to the same high school and had a bunch of the same teachers, I'm basically his long-lost, unattractive, nerdy brother. So no need.]
And of course, the man of the hour, Seth Rogen. The crowd literally EXPLODED. This one dumb bitch standing next to me sounded EXACTLY like what I am writing right now: "OHMAIGAWOHMAIGAAAAAWD ITSETHITSETHITSETH ILUVHIMILUVHIMILUVHIM" and so on and so forth. She went on for a good thirty seconds. Without breathing. I want to punch her in the gut for her own good. A girl needs to breathe once in a while, ya know? Wouldn't want an ambulance to ruin the whole event. And she just needed to shut the fuck up. I'm basically the best teacher some of these people have ever met.
I'm still beyond myself how I managed to get such a great shot of him, considering 1) I had to reach as high as I could for this angle and 2) it was literally a mosh pit of people pushing, clawing, and swearing like sailors, trying to get Seth to sign pictures and posters.
Murphy: "Seth! From a Jew to a Jew!"
Me: "What does that even mean?"
Murphy: "It's a Jew thing. You wouldn't understand."
And so Murphy and I were about to leave. We figured that since all the big stars were here and it was around 7:15pm, that was the end of the red carpet event. But just as we were about to turn and walk away, another car pulls up. "Who the hell?" we asked each other.
Jonah Hill. Last to show, longest car. And this would have been a much better shot were it not for MURPHY'S TARD HAND BLOCKING HIS FACE.
Murphy: "Jonah! Let me shake your hand! Can I please shake your hand? You're my hero!"
Ignored entirely. He was practically in tears (at least, on the inside, I hope).
And so, at the end of the day, we had gotten to see some pretty big stars, and we were happy especially considering these were stars we actually sort of care about because we love their movies so much. But I wasn't crying over not having gotten an autograph or not having gotten a picture with some stars, like some of these girls were. Really, a red carpet premiere is sort of cool, but ultimately pretty pointless. These people don't look any different in person than on the screen because this is such a highly public event that they'll of course come out looking their Sunday best.
One more week left here in Los Angeles.
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