migblog: 04.04

thank you america for finally voting john stevens off oh god yes thank you thank you thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!

fantasia and latoya all the way, baby!

i just finished my phase one of telebears (for all of you non-berkeley folk, it's the online registration system to enroll in classes and all that stuff). on the list of miguel's definite classes that he's taking are linguistics 110 (phonetics and phonology), linguistics 130 (comparative and historical linguistics), and phys ed lab (yoga section).

yeah, i'm taking yoga next semester. kinda crazy, huh? i never thought i'd be taking yoga ever, let alone at cal.

i didn't know i could be this ready for the month to be fucking over already.

recently i've been on a fix of family guy season three courtesy of hoh o hoh chen's dvd collection. one of my favorite episodes would have to be "mr. saturday knight." who knew irreverence and offensiveness would be one of the key things to make a miguel's favorite tv show?

the goings-on of the griffin family are much more endearing than the simpsons', in my opinion. plus stewie is just fucking hilarious.

i'm actually listening to the overtones spring show on my computer right now. i just really wanted to say good job to those girls because they're freaking awesome.

ah. and did i mention that i don't have class until two on mwf this week, and not until 4 on tuesday-thursdays? a bunch of my professors decided to up and go to cuba. (is there something special going on? i don't know why all of a sudden a bunch of them decided to go.)

anywho. i'm taking it easy this week.

and ooh! miguel rants about the swan later!

the breeze keeps on blowing this scent from next door that smells like david's laundry. (david, whatever detergent you use, apparently these people use it too.) it's a little weird, since i associate that scent with david, but whatever. he's going to end up living on this side of town anyway, so it's like a southside preview of what david's laundry smells like.

i am so out of it, i'm writing about how the breeze smells like david's laundry.

it's been really nice weather-wise recently, despite the heat. after it rained at the beginning of the week it's as if the clouds decided to take a vacation and told the sun to piss on the bay area. lo and behold, it did just that. the campanile was basking in sun-piss as it shone majestically this afternoon.

i can't believe i just wrote the words "campanile" and "sun-piss" in the same sentence. (there, i did it again.)

something about tonight -- i guess it's the heat -- that's making me write and analyze self-referentially. the practice, one of its final episodes, is running in the background. there's a hum of the fan going on. the sound of traffic lazing around berkeley, i can hear through my window. someone's cooking something on this side of the apartment building. and the tenants next door just started blasting snoop dogg.

it has definitely been a long month, and i'm ready for it to be over.

at least the weather's nice. finals in three weeks.

yeesh.

congratulatoins to the cast and crew of company. you guys did an amazing job today. (i didn't even know it was the last performance until sam pointed it out to me in the foyer afterwards.)

some of the songs were very familiar -- "you could drive a person crazy" was a favorite of my mom's, actually -- and some were decadently good. the acting was great, from ben, playing the lead, to will, playing "my own little jew," to brett, who played the pseudo-gay guy. meera did a great job, and so did the rest of the girls. it was a very good experience.

does anyone out there watch "extreme makeover home edition?"

oh man, pr bonding is so much fun!

of the things i witnessed tonight were wolfman finishing a whole bottle of an alcoholic beverage (woo!), tristan redder than any asian person i've ever met when drunk, jdlp almost humping my bed, rachel hopped up on candy, and andrea laughing at the most random moments during family guy.

good times, good times.

if you're procrastinating (and you know it!), leave a comment.

that's exactly what i'm doing right now.

just do it!

i fucking hate how american idol works.

suffice it to say i'm pissed off that jennifer hudson had to leave and fucking john stevens and diana degarmo get to stay for one more week.

if john stevens isn't out the next week, i will shoot him myself. and i've already cursed diana degarmo to choke on the next cock she's sucking.

jennifer hudson, as fantasia barrino said, you are my american idol.

fucking fuckers. she deserved better. and the cutoff at the end? rude. plain rude.

i'm sure all those giddy sixteen year olds are beaming that john stevens and diana degarmo are still around.

a giant fuck you to all those who support them both. they don't deserve that.

and fuck the oc. (WHO FUCKING CALLS IT THE OC?!?!?)

yeah. america, you make me somewhat sick.

oh, we look so pretty.

go take a look at what was the new look for miguel, just in time for finals.

(that was largely in part to jake's conair kit, replete with the size three guard and the first floor bathroom in th.)

the swing of things is definitely happening, now that instruction ends in less than three weeks, i have a midterm on friday, and my telebears appointment is on monday. tack on three finals and a paper, contacting folks for calso responsibilities, recruiting freshmen to be band minions, and declaring the major once the semester's over, and you've got yourself a very busy miguel.

the summer looks to be productive. hopefully i've got myself at least one paying job, in which case i can start paying some serious bank i owe some people.

two years done. two (and a half?) to go.

slowly but surely, things are shaping up to be rather good, actually.

and john stevens better be kicked off of american idol tomorrow. damn he sucks. i actually would have stomached one more week of jon peter lewis, but john stevens crooning through mandy was painful to the eyes and ears.

woop.

you're not ever going to believe this until you see it, but was on wheel of fortune*. i just finished a twelve-hour taping session in the moscone center in san francisco.

now before you get all giddy, no, i wasn't a contestant.

but you better believe i was there for all of it for the "week-long" taping of college week. they had the cal band as the guest band for college week, and so for all five shows we taped for, we played a bunch of fight songs and a whole slew of other tunes.

by "week-long" i mean taping a week's worth of shows in one entire day, which is why i was there for twelve hours straight. (and the editing's fantastic -- every time they say "we've been in san francisco for three weeks now" they really mean "we've been taping in san francisco for three days straight with fifteen shows and forty-five contestants" -- not to mention all the glitches and blips that were fixed on the fly, thanks to digital technology and a pretty cool budget.)

i sat right at the front row, and on my hat, i rotated between five signs: "hi chris, david, ling and ali," "hi sam," "hi shereen," "hi jon," and of course, "hi mom."

i'm not going to spoil it for you, but i can tell you that the university of california berkeley totally represented at the show. (and that performance by the girl from stanfurd wasn't bad, either.)

we got fed a lot, and it was a lot of good food. juice, fruit, bagels, yogurt, soda, pasta, salad, chicken -- we ate well.

not to mention that i was in the same dinner line and two steps away from vanna white as she made herself a plate of chicken parmesan. (VANNA WHITE!)

at the end of the day, we got free shirts, and we're getting free pictures, too. it was a great experience, something i'm sure that in a few years i'll be glad to be reminiscing about what exactly happened today.

and man, pat sajak still looks like he's only thirty. they say makeup does wonders, but i never knew it could make someone not age.

wheel of fortune was great. watch out for me, i'll be on tv!

*the cal band will be appearing on wheel of fortune's college week in san francisco during the entire week of may 17-21. check your local station for times and listings.

oops. i ctrl+a - backspaced this entry.

sucks for you.

dammit, i keep forgetting to talk about stuff.

i also got the kill bill volume one dvd today you better believe i'm gonna watch the shit out of this dvd.

okay, now i really don't have much left to say.

cheeseboard pizza is awesome.

there's been one thing that's been absolutely bugging the fuck out of me, and that's when people use stupid excuses as crutches, to the point where they get a little too dejected and then have to cover up their own ass for safety.

i mean, i do it all the time whenever i play on the oboe poorly. i say it's the reed; most of the time, really, it's my not supporting my sound or my not wanting to play. but it's different when it affects your life choices and those alleged big deals we're all told we should look out for.

i hate it when people use stupid excuses to get out of things, to get out of the bounds of good taste and common sense just so you can attribute one of your character flaws -- lack of motivation, apathy, dependence -- as part of your personality, and that it's not something you can cope with but rather something you deal with everyday.

i only need to take a look around me and then i realize it's happening really close to me. and it sucks, because i don't have the guts to tell someone off about their being petty or their lack of drive to apply themselves, which could potentially offset this irk i'm feeling.

but to make it general, here's what i have to say: don't use that as a crutch. i know you so much better than that, and you're so much better than that, that applying yourself -- really applying yourself and finding some sort of inner drive to somehow compel you into thinking about it once or twice -- will be easy enough when you finally come to terms that you're just lying to yourself in the end.

i hope you realize this. but if you don't, i'm just hoping it's not too late when it does click, if ever.

sigh.

great, fantastic, most enjoyable weekend.

i attended a workshop for the band so that i can teach the incoming freshman class how to march, and now i have a nice tan and bulging calves.

after that, we decided to celebrate ling's birthday at beckett's. lots of food, lots of fun, and lots of people, too. we were all worried that some people wouldn't be able to make it, but all in all it was a great experience.

we headed to ling's place afterwards, and had ourselves a marvelous time watching the bachelor and trashing on a few people.

the next day, the depressing foursome -- me, chappy, david, and kat -- went around san francisco on our lifelong quest to walk every street of san francisco up and down. (this was our second trip on a so-called jesus holiday; the first one was on christmas, and we covered from alamo square on grove and north to van ness, east on washington and south on grant, back to montgomery.) this time, we found ourselves up kearny, to lombard, to jefferson and down van ness and east on jackson, eventually ending up on montgomery and back to powell.

we're not insane. we just like doing this for ourselves. and we have fun doing it, whether going in random apartment complexes and finding the nearest house numbered 666, or eating dim sum, or climbing up hills or jumping over parking meters. and it always ends at the westin st. francis in union square, where we have a final view at the top of the elevators and converse about how awesome the day was.

i love being here.

i sang for the first time in a long time tonight.

for lack of things to do on a friday evening, i went ahead and saw the sound of music sing-along with hanadi and erika.

it was like rocky horror, only g-rated.

they had a cute little costume contest beforehand, and though i thought that the men's octet would be singing "do-re-mi," apparently there was some sort of mix-up that led the hostess of the evening to believe otherwise.

we got goodie bags full of stuff, and you better believe we sang the shit out of that musical. (i even belted the high note in the "oh-de-lay-hee-hoo" on the goatherd song. and you should have heard the girl behind me screaming "climb every mountain" because it almost sounded like it hurt.)

all in all, that was lots of fun. it reminded me of what my cousins and i used to watch when we were all around two years old, huddled near the tv eating popcorn and humming the tunes because we never knew what the lyrics were. and now i do, and i sang.

i sang like a governess in love with a baron with seven children fleeing from nazis toting a guitar wearing drapes for clothes in an abbey full of nuns aged sixteen going on seventeen.

i sang. you better believe i sang.

and i sang loudly.

the sun set at eight in the evening. the sky glowed a beautiful purple and orange.

the week has been tremendously good to me, and i don't know what i've done recently if at all to deserve the goodness. there's been something nice everyday, and it's not seeing an end until monday.

tomorrow is my last free day until the monster that is the month of april devours the rest of my free time.

the california theatre is showing the sound of music sing-along (ie the words are going to show up at the bottom of the screen for everyone to, as the title suggests, sing along) tomorrow evening. how cool is that!

jon, you're awesome.

i can't wait for the weekend. ling's birthday and wassailing on the agenda; they promise to be fun.

ALCOHOL!

yeah, sorry for the weird disjointed paragraphs, but i needed a break from a paper. and now i have to go back to work on it.

with that, go check out the william hung dvd, because matt talbot is on it. (if you know who matt talbot is, yes, it's that matt talbot. if you don't, consider yourself lucky.)

i want a puppy.

dinner at chez panisse consisted of the following food items:

hors d'oeuvres:
- goat milk ricotta cheese with fava beans and mint
- baked scallops with meyer lemon zest
- fresh oysters
- navarre chardonnay

main course:
- pan-fried sand dabs with potatoes, asparagus, and herb mayonnaise
- house zinfandel
- sparkling water

dessert:
- pixie tangerines and dates
- pine nut praline ice cream with chocolate sauce and chocolate wafers
- single espresso

yeah, it's all it's cracked up to be, and more. especially if you're more than willing to pay for it. (the bill was extravagant. ask me if you want to know how much dinner at the cafe was.) the food was delicious, magnificent, awesome -- while you're eating, you're bound to ask "how did they do that?" as well as "how could food taste this good?"

the service was impeccable. it's like you don't even know they're doing something until whatever it is they've done -- refill your water, clean up your table, bus your dishes, take your wine glass, whatever -- is done. constant checking, no hassles. they're there, but it's like they're not. and how they execute their jobs is fantastic.

the ice cream itself was worth the whole trip.

i wasn't daring enough to try the twenty-three dollar glass of port for dessert, but maybe next time. there were also a couple of items on the menu that looked particularly pleasing: the squid, the duck, and the nettle-pecorino pizza. but those are for next time, for sure.

in any case, my gustatory yens have been satiated for the time being. three hours of eating and being in good company; that's what it's all about. alice waters was up to something when she started up this whole thing.

and in other news, how does one get rid of annoying spyware? i can't load my browser properly without it going nutso on my computer. every time i click something, my cd drive opens up, or my speakers emit this horrible buzzing noise, and sometimes it take forever to load a friggin' word document -- A WORD DOCUMENT -- that it's beginning to piss me off substantially.

i'm practically done with midterms. the next big thing to hit miguel square in the jaw would be cal day preparations, and even those aren't too bad, save for a few sleepless coffee-powered evenings and a few missed classes. but all in all, the week has been fantastic, and it looks like relief isn't too far in sight.

the depressing foursome are making a comeback. watch out, san francisco: we're coming to get you!

yup. good week.

no more upset stomachs, no sirree!

mondays are gradually getting easier and easier to handle. then again, i just need to show up to class, and then everything is somewhat right with the world. (i don't know what it is about monday classes, but they just seem to be more lax than other in-week classes.)

i actually got to see the "visit benicia" billboard i've heard so many things about. case in point: a billboard, with a giant seagull and a gazebo in the background over rolling plains, with giant lettering saying "visit benicia." my question, first of all, is why a seagull? and secondly, why try to advertise the tourism industry for a town that has absolutely nothing going for it in terms of tourism? just leave it to americans to try and capitalize on everything.

now back to that high school thing i was talking about. i've recently had an upsurge to go search for these now-lost kin of mine (okay, so not exactly kin, but you know what i mean). high school friends seem to be more elusive than the flying purple midget orangutan.

then again, though, i don't feel too bad about not hearing from them because, hell, it's why i went to college -- to escape that whole clique-y-ness of it all, to finally grow up and grow some balls and find myself new people to acquaint with. and, i figure, it's only been two years. that's nothing. in eight more i'll be hearing from the motherfucking reunion committee, and i'm sure i'll be tossing away the invitation as soon as i get it in the mail.

it's only monday. but it's been good so far. hopefully the week follows the trend.

ack! i'm out of cigarrettes!

i know you're ready to lose that hour of sleep thanks to the spring-forward effect of daylight savings.

i've been feeling really shitty physically, since two days ago i've been waking up with dry heaves and the room spinning. real lightheaded stuff, and i can't stand up straight nor walk a straight line. (and no, i haven't been a drunky mcdrunkdrunk since london.) it's concerning me a bit -- i haven't been able to actually do much in the way of getting around because i feel like horrible.

this morning was somewhat better (one dry heave as opposed to fifteen the morning before), and i actually felt like i helped out substantially, since i went ahead and painted for the pr work party. tonight, there's hit the slopes (th's wonderful shimmyshimmybangbalang), and here's my hoping that alcohol doesn't give me a repeat of the last two days.

i really want to see you, but we're both too busy. bah. soon, i promise.

i have such a good feeling about this weekend, i don't know why. maybe it's that i have nothing to do except catch up on some reading and some writing -- which takes no more than a few hours at most -- and then, some sort of relaxation in which hopefully i can figure out what's wrong with me.

lately i've been having these weird nostalgic dreams of high school. i really wish i'd kept in touch with some people. sometimes i even wish i could go tell a person i'm sorry i was such a dick. but the time will come when everything sorts itself out. i just hope it's soon.

meh. i'll get more pensive after the alcohol.

i'm quitting band.

i'm giving up on my relationship.

i hate all of my friends.

...

april fools!

migblog

4.28.2004

4.26.2004

4.25.2004

4.22.2004

4.21.2004

4.20.2004

4.18.2004

4.15.2004

4.13.2004

4.12.2004

4.09.2004

4.08.2004

4.07.2004

4.05.2004

4.03.2004

4.01.2004

miguel

places

recently

archives