We got The Axe back. 24 is back (FINALLY). Obama won the presidency. Tom Brady is injured forever. Ohio State is not going to the national championship game. With such a string of amazing events occurring within such a short period of time, this can only mean one thing:
This will be the BEST YEAR EVER. With all the stars aligned, I am 126% confident that the following things will happen:
-We will continue to keep The Axe for a long time, or based on this year's fortune, at least for another year.
-Cal will go to the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2010 and win.
Corollary: Joe Kapp will taste tequila for the first time in 52 years, but as a result of not having tasted the drink in so long, will go crazy, strip naked, and streak through the streets of Oakland howling like a hyena.
Addition: the homeless in the streets of Oakland will mistake his howls of insanity for springtime mating calls and gravitate to his location.
Additional addition: Kapp will assume a new superhero identity as Homeless Man, utilizing his newfound powers to drink tequila and summon the homeless at will to do his bidding.
-I will ace all my classes, get into med school at Harvard, graduate in three years, and use my charm and wit to convince the powers-that-be that I am so brilliant I don't need to go through residency and can begin practice immediately. Shameless plug: Look for Dr. Gordo's Super Amazing Gynecology Clinic, coming to Telegraph and Parker in August 2013. Clinic hours 10pm-3am, CASH ONLY. Prices negotiable.
So to sirs and madams Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Oops-Sorry-We-Don't-Like-You, thank you for guiding your lines and finally getting things right.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
My blurb for the North Tunnel Echo about the Maryland trip
"I didn't know our trip destination got changed to Taipei."
That was the first thing I thought of upon exiting the doors of the Baltimore/Washington International Airport. The other band members around me similarly pondered why we had flown into a tropical rain forest instead of Maryland. Standing outside waiting for the bus to pick us up, I literally watched a layer of sweat form on the skin of my arm within five minutes.
Quite a welcome for a bunch of spoiled coastal Californians.
Aside from the three-showers-a-day degree of humidity and heat, our trip to Maryland was definitely one of the more memorable trips I've been on, mostly because there were actually things to do other than waste time watching TV in the hotel room (I'm looking at you, Pullman and Corvallis).
Taking the Metrorail into the National Mall area of DC was an adventure in an of itself. A warning: if you ever find yourself getting onto the Metro from the Rosslyn station in Arlington, DO NOT LOOK DOWN while on the escalator. You'll lose all sense of balance and stumble to a horrifying, long-term-hospital-stay-inducing state, because it's the longest escalator in the world (I haven't looked it up on Wikipedia to confirm, so it's probably not true, but you get the point). The ride from the top to the bottom took a full two minutes and three seconds (margin of error: three seconds caused by the initial shock of how freaking scary the ride was). The other shocking part? The Metro ride took all of six minutes. For comparison, it takes about 15 minutes for a BART ride from Downtown Berkeley to San Francisco.
Walking around seeing all the famous national monuments at night for the first time in my life was a pretty incredible experience, especially because we made the rather poor decision of walking all the way from the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial and back around, making our total walking distance for the night about five miles.
This blurb, of course, would be incomplete without mention of the actual football game itself, so I'll say this: the stadium was small but homey, the Maryland fans were warm and welcoming, and the general atmosphere of the home crowd after the game was, "Did we just win?"
What made this trip truly memorable, however, was the sheer number of recent Cal Band alumni - I counted about thirty, but there were probably more - who attended the game, many of them now East Coast transplants. Many of us were graced with the opportunity to revisit with bandsmen whom we had not seen since our first year in band. Every one of them was just as passionate and excited to be at the game as when they were in the band - it's always reassuring to see a familiar face in unfamiliar territories. If that kind of networking and dedication doesn't say Go Bears, I don't know what does.
That was the first thing I thought of upon exiting the doors of the Baltimore/Washington International Airport. The other band members around me similarly pondered why we had flown into a tropical rain forest instead of Maryland. Standing outside waiting for the bus to pick us up, I literally watched a layer of sweat form on the skin of my arm within five minutes.
Quite a welcome for a bunch of spoiled coastal Californians.
Aside from the three-showers-a-day degree of humidity and heat, our trip to Maryland was definitely one of the more memorable trips I've been on, mostly because there were actually things to do other than waste time watching TV in the hotel room (I'm looking at you, Pullman and Corvallis).
Taking the Metrorail into the National Mall area of DC was an adventure in an of itself. A warning: if you ever find yourself getting onto the Metro from the Rosslyn station in Arlington, DO NOT LOOK DOWN while on the escalator. You'll lose all sense of balance and stumble to a horrifying, long-term-hospital-stay-inducing state, because it's the longest escalator in the world (I haven't looked it up on Wikipedia to confirm, so it's probably not true, but you get the point). The ride from the top to the bottom took a full two minutes and three seconds (margin of error: three seconds caused by the initial shock of how freaking scary the ride was). The other shocking part? The Metro ride took all of six minutes. For comparison, it takes about 15 minutes for a BART ride from Downtown Berkeley to San Francisco.
Walking around seeing all the famous national monuments at night for the first time in my life was a pretty incredible experience, especially because we made the rather poor decision of walking all the way from the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial and back around, making our total walking distance for the night about five miles.
This blurb, of course, would be incomplete without mention of the actual football game itself, so I'll say this: the stadium was small but homey, the Maryland fans were warm and welcoming, and the general atmosphere of the home crowd after the game was, "Did we just win?"
What made this trip truly memorable, however, was the sheer number of recent Cal Band alumni - I counted about thirty, but there were probably more - who attended the game, many of them now East Coast transplants. Many of us were graced with the opportunity to revisit with bandsmen whom we had not seen since our first year in band. Every one of them was just as passionate and excited to be at the game as when they were in the band - it's always reassuring to see a familiar face in unfamiliar territories. If that kind of networking and dedication doesn't say Go Bears, I don't know what does.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Responsible Parenting, a la Sarah Palin
Growing up in one of the major liberal fortresses of America, I was always taught that it is considered "irresponsible parenting" to not allow one's children to chase their dreams to their fullest extent. To force the parents' now-bygone childhood dreams onto their children is not only irresponsible, but downright inappropriate. That is what I was taught in school.
Then, of course, my parents raised me in the entirely opposite manner. It's the whole Asian filial piety "Oooh my son goeeng to be a doctah, what YOH son do? My son go to Hahfahd, wheh YOH son go?" type of bullshit. (Actually, my parents have been much better about this kind of stuff recently, but only because I'm convinced that they've given up almost all hope regarding my future.)
So on Saturday, as I was sitting outside the California Science Center in Los Angeles, eating lunch and getting ready to play for a Cal tailgate/rally that was neither really a tailgate nor a good rally, I watched a happy, beautiful, decidedly European family of four walk past us. The couple couldn't have been older than thirty. The father had his young son on his shoulders while the daughter waddled across the grass with her tiny hand in her mother's. Other than the fact that they were decked out in what looked like discount USC garb, they were damn near perfect.
That gorgeous painting of the Great American Dream was shattered as soon as the father opened the cumdumpster that he likes to call his "mouth."
In a very pointed, I'm-compensating-for-my-subpar-educated-ass manner, he said loudly to his son while looking at me, "You see this? This is what happens when you go to a state school. Sitting on the ground eating bad plastic box lunches. Sweetheart, promise me you'll never go to a *ahem* STATE school."
He walked off, giving us the ol' stink-eye and had his two fingers up in the air. Undoubtedly, those two fingers smelled of runny, undigested-corn-and-nut-embedded poop from picking at his hemorrhoids all day. That, or he started self-testing for prostate cancer twenty years too soon.
Which brings me back to my original point of what is considered responsible parenting: if, for whatever ungodly reason, it becomes my child's greatest and only dream to attend USC, would it be wrong of me to do my very best to make it as difficult as possible for my child to do so? Much in the same way that I feel about sending my kids to private school for education levels below that of a bachelor's (plenty of great public schools out there), I don't really feel like wasting my money on an educational experience that costs four times as much and produces half a man, especially if the degree name itself doesn't even hold that much clout in the workplace or academia. (Superficial, I know, but the sad truth is that, as much as we'd like to say "So what if you went to Harvard, you were last place in your class," it's still a Harvard degree, and the degree name is still a real point of consideration when it comes to the job market.)
Would my child hate me for obstructing his greatest dream, which if unfulfilled would probably destroy his faith in humanity for all eternity and definitely lead to a life on the street, hiding in back alleys and sucking dick for crack? Probably. But I think in the end, it would be better for him in the long run to leave his dream unfulfilled and end up a drug mule than to end up a terrible excuse for a human being, as exemplified by my friend Poopy Fingers.
Then, of course, my parents raised me in the entirely opposite manner. It's the whole Asian filial piety "Oooh my son goeeng to be a doctah, what YOH son do? My son go to Hahfahd, wheh YOH son go?" type of bullshit. (Actually, my parents have been much better about this kind of stuff recently, but only because I'm convinced that they've given up almost all hope regarding my future.)
So on Saturday, as I was sitting outside the California Science Center in Los Angeles, eating lunch and getting ready to play for a Cal tailgate/rally that was neither really a tailgate nor a good rally, I watched a happy, beautiful, decidedly European family of four walk past us. The couple couldn't have been older than thirty. The father had his young son on his shoulders while the daughter waddled across the grass with her tiny hand in her mother's. Other than the fact that they were decked out in what looked like discount USC garb, they were damn near perfect.
That gorgeous painting of the Great American Dream was shattered as soon as the father opened the cumdumpster that he likes to call his "mouth."
In a very pointed, I'm-compensating-for-my-subpar-educated-ass manner, he said loudly to his son while looking at me, "You see this? This is what happens when you go to a state school. Sitting on the ground eating bad plastic box lunches. Sweetheart, promise me you'll never go to a *ahem* STATE school."
He walked off, giving us the ol' stink-eye and had his two fingers up in the air. Undoubtedly, those two fingers smelled of runny, undigested-corn-and-nut-embedded poop from picking at his hemorrhoids all day. That, or he started self-testing for prostate cancer twenty years too soon.
Which brings me back to my original point of what is considered responsible parenting: if, for whatever ungodly reason, it becomes my child's greatest and only dream to attend USC, would it be wrong of me to do my very best to make it as difficult as possible for my child to do so? Much in the same way that I feel about sending my kids to private school for education levels below that of a bachelor's (plenty of great public schools out there), I don't really feel like wasting my money on an educational experience that costs four times as much and produces half a man, especially if the degree name itself doesn't even hold that much clout in the workplace or academia. (Superficial, I know, but the sad truth is that, as much as we'd like to say "So what if you went to Harvard, you were last place in your class," it's still a Harvard degree, and the degree name is still a real point of consideration when it comes to the job market.)
Would my child hate me for obstructing his greatest dream, which if unfulfilled would probably destroy his faith in humanity for all eternity and definitely lead to a life on the street, hiding in back alleys and sucking dick for crack? Probably. But I think in the end, it would be better for him in the long run to leave his dream unfulfilled and end up a drug mule than to end up a terrible excuse for a human being, as exemplified by my friend Poopy Fingers.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
I believe in Barack Obama.
Five hours ago, I was sitting in 10 Evans taking my Immunology midterm, racking my brain, designing torturous experiments to fuck over mice and deplete them of any chance of surviving a bacterial or viral injection (and having fun doing it, natch).
At around 7:45pm, one of the proctoring GSIs let out a little squeaky yelp, as if someone had stepped on a mouse (if you ever have the fortune to happen to listen to Sisi sneeze, it's about like that).
"OBAMA WINS!" she exclaimed. "OOOH MAI GAAAWD OBAMA WINS!"
The rest of the class cheered a little bit and goes back to their exams. I was pissed that she broke my concentration, but I went back to my exam with a smile on my face.
I could also barely concentrate for the remainder of my exam because thoughts of sugar plum fairies and thriving small businesses danced around my head. As a result, I didn't finish two of the nine problems on the exam. So it is now official: I am blaming President Barack Obama for my soon-to-be poor grade in MCB 150.
President Barack Obama. Say that a couple of times to yourself. President Barack Obama of the United States of America. I'm going to keep saying it, especially because my mom is still sad that Hillary Clinton isn't the president.
At around 7:45pm, one of the proctoring GSIs let out a little squeaky yelp, as if someone had stepped on a mouse (if you ever have the fortune to happen to listen to Sisi sneeze, it's about like that).
"OBAMA WINS!" she exclaimed. "OOOH MAI GAAAWD OBAMA WINS!"
The rest of the class cheered a little bit and goes back to their exams. I was pissed that she broke my concentration, but I went back to my exam with a smile on my face.
I could also barely concentrate for the remainder of my exam because thoughts of sugar plum fairies and thriving small businesses danced around my head. As a result, I didn't finish two of the nine problems on the exam. So it is now official: I am blaming President Barack Obama for my soon-to-be poor grade in MCB 150.
President Barack Obama. Say that a couple of times to yourself. President Barack Obama of the United States of America. I'm going to keep saying it, especially because my mom is still sad that Hillary Clinton isn't the president.
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